Sports
Phil Hayford Not Upset With Shorecrest's Loss
The long-time Chargers coach believes only a handful of plays kept his team from winning. Plays that can be corrected by the time the regular season begins this fall.
It's hard for many football coaches to come away smiling after a 41-28 loss but that is exactly what Shorecrest Prep football coach Phil Hayford did when his Chargers lost to Bradenton Christian.
Rather than look at the score, he looked at the game. A spring game is a scrimmage to see how new starters are able to cope with another opponent and how those same players handle things they may not have seen in practice before.
"We had a one-possession game going into the last four minutes," Hayford said, dismissing what looks to be a lopsided margin at face value. "I think we had a couple of breakdowns defensively, correctable mistakes. We had three plays where we gave up 120 yards rushing. You take those away; we held them to three yards per carry
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"There were a couple of instances where we had a young guy on the field [who misread a play]. Those are correctable. Those are things we can get taken care of."
Sam Grant is expected to be the Chargers' starting quarterback this fall and he started the spring game. Currently an eighth-grader, Grant's inexperience showed early when he had a receiver get past Bradenton Christian’s defense for an easy score, but Grant "short-armed" the ball which was intercepted. Overall, Hayford was happy with how Grant played.
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Hayford also liked the play of Garrett Schulte, a junior. Schulte scored on his first touch of the game, a play off-tackle for 75 yards. He finished with 230 yards.
"I should have given him the ball a bunch more times," Hayford said.
Middle linebacker Christian Mandula really opened Hayford's eyes. Trying to recover from a broken hand in which he missed much of spring practice, Mandula led the Chargers with 15 solo tackles and a blocked extra point.
Cornerback Jake Brandenburg, who played on the Chargers' baseball squad that came within a win of the state tournament, only had four practices this spring under his belt but still started at cornerback and played a solid game Hayford thought.
All in all, Hayford was about as happy with a loss as a coach can get.
"The mistakes we made can be corrected and we will work on them through the summer," Hayford said of summer film studies.
