Spring Football Practice Has Begun

Spring football practices have begun at high schools throughout Florida and Largo Patch has decided to touch base with the three local high schools to see what objectives the coaches have for their teams.

Indian Rocks Christian

Golden Eagles coach Mark Buchanan has a strange predicament on his hands. He has a solid senior-to-be class and a load of talented incoming freshman.

Sophomores and juniors? Not many. So Buchanan will have the task of getting his incoming freshmen up to speed to play along side the solid senior class.

"We are really young in a lot of positions so we have to get the kids some experience," Buchanan said of his goal for spring practice. The youngsters "are going to have to play quite a bit for us."

For some coaches, this would be a grave concern. Not so much for Buchanan.

"They have been successful together coming through our junior high program," Buchanan said. "It's a talented group, maybe the most talented I have ever had. Several will play right away and we will not miss a beat."

How quickly the freshmen can gel with the seniors will be the question so Buchanan is going to give the freshmen sort of a baptism by fire in practice, a crash course.

"I'm so excited for the freshmen," Buchanan said. "I'm looking forward to the seniors taking over the team, but in the same manner, bringing along the younger and seeing them fit into positions."

Largo

Not much guesswork for Packers coach Rick Rodriguez. Largo is simply loaded with a team full of impressive sophomores and juniors including star quarterback Juwan Brown.

Last year the team was riddled with injuries and saw Brown and linebacker Derrick Doss, among many other young starters, go down with injuries. As a result, Rodriguez's bench got significant playing time last year. Working with his reserves more than his starters will be Rodriguez's key focal point this month.

"Since we already know who will be starting, it gives coaches more time to work with the backup guys," Rodriguez said. "We will be able to move some people around to get the right chemistry for a winning formula. It gives you more time to develop players, have them blossom and get someone else in there to give them reps in practice."

With the near epidemic of injuries the Packers had last season, Rodriguez has a hunch the cure is tougher practices.

"We are going at each other pretty hard, we are going after it," Rodriguez said. "You have to play football hard. We have been doing more hitting in practice. We are getting after each other."

Pinellas Park

The bigger the roster the better the chance of having good players. That's the way Patriots coach Kenny Crawford sees it. This year he is boasting 73 players who came out to play football- an impressive number.

Now comes the hard work: Trying to find the jewels among the masses.

"We need to establish who are the leaders and who the stars are going to be and then we have to build team unity," Crawford said. "The numbers are big and that is part of where we have to find out where everyone fits in. We have to get them accustomed to varsity football. It will be a learning experience."

One thing Crawford is happy about is the attitude his players have.

"These kids love to play football, they just love to play," Crawford said. "They love to play physical. [Thursday] we had a very, very, very physical day. The pads were popping. It was a very noisy day."