By ROY HESS | Staff Writer
Where do the St. Joseph Academy Bloodhounds go from here?
Friday night’s first scrimmage of the 2018 football season at La Feria revealed they have a lot of work ahead of them.
Playing on the Lions’ home field, the Bloodhounds were outscored 5-1 during the controlled portion of the scrimmage and then they suffered a 28-7 setback in two quarters of game situation action.
La Feria returns a veteran 6-4 district co-championship team with all of its players at the skilled positions back, so the fact the Lions scored nine touchdowns on the night is not all that surprising.
And even though the Bloodhounds return five starters on each side of the ball from a 7-5 squad that won a TAPPS district title last season, make no mistake, it’s a new era for SJA football.
Bloodhounds head coach Tino Villarreal, now in his fifth year, said as much after Friday’s scrimmage.
Villarreal said he and his coaches welcome the challenge that is ahead for the team.
“I know our fan base isn’t used to seeing the scoreboard look like it did against La Feria,” the SJA coach said. “I told the players earlier Friday that it’s my job to get them ready for the season, and I am very optimistic about the task at hand. I’m very excited for the season and I accept the responsibility for how we looked in our first scrimmage.
“I’m also excited to see how we will look in our second scrimmage,” Villarreal added. “I hope that it is a night and day look. Practice time and game time (speed) are completely different. I’m excited for our season. The plan is to look back at this first scrimmage and tell ourselves that we’ve come a long, long way.
“La Feria has high hopes for its season and we have high hopes for our season as well.”
Melik Kauachi, a running back new to varsity action, scored both of SJA’s touchdowns on Friday, one during each half. They came on runs of 6 and 1 yards.
“We had some bright moments (against La Feria),” Villarreal said. “But we also showed our youth. Our offensive line had some good moments. We just have to fire out (of our blocks) all at the same time. I thought we had some good play from the offensive line, which has been kind of a question mark for us.
“We basically had three rookies out there (in the offensive line),” he added. “They had times where there was good pocket protection (for new quarterback Tomas Edge) and also some good run blocking.”
The Bloodhounds play their second scrimmage at 4:30 p.m. Thursday at Canales Field against Porter.
“We look forward to a real strong test from Porter as well,” Villarreal said.
“We have a real tough non-district schedule,” he added. “Our job (as coaches) is to take things a week at a time and build things up because we want to be at full steam by the time we hit district (Oct. 19). Coming away with whatever bright spots we had against La Feria is what allows us to step forward in that direction.”
The Bloodhounds play their first three games of the regular season on the road, beginning with a contest at Grulla on Aug. 31. They’re at Progreso and Rio Hondo after that before playing their home opener at Canales Field against Raymondville on Sept. 21.
SJA’s TAPPS district opener is Oct. 19 at Corpus Christi John Paul II.