By ANDREW CRUM, Staff Writer
Just one week remains for Metro-area football teams to fine tune before the season starts.
Rivera, Hanna, Brownsville Veterans Memorial, St. Joseph Academy, Los Fresnos and Port Isabel just finished a full two weeks of practices and their first scrimmages of the season.
Lopez, Pace and Porter, which started a week later because of spring practices, have finished a week’s worth of practice. Each will prepare this week for their one and only scrimmage. The Lobos face St. Joseph, the Vikings travel to Edinburg Economedes and the Cowboys take on Raymondville.
After Rivera faced an opponent for the first time this season, the Raiders expected to begin getting into a normal routine. This includes watching film from the previous night to learn from mistakes on both sides of the ball and move forward.
“I take out of it what we need to do in practice to get better,” Rivera coach Tom Chavez said after the scrimmage against Mercedes. “What we need to do in practice together.”
Teams that just began working in full pads will use this week to establish what they need to do against their scrimmage opponent and to get a better idea about the depth chart before the end of the week.
For Lopez, Pace and Porter, the build up of hitting an opponent instead of a teammate will come to fruition.
The Vikings have had a good week of practices, and there is an evident shift in the program that point to positive.
“They love it,” Pace coach William Deen said. “They’re here on time. We’re not making phone calls in the morning (like previous seasons). It’s a pleasant situation.”
Deen hoped to harness that positive energy and continue to build toward Week 1.
“Just to get prepared,” he said as his team prepares for a scrimmage this week. “Everything we do (now) is in preparation for that (Week 1) game.”
The Lobos will continue to use the momentum from spring practices to build on what they accomplished this past week.
“I’ll take a month over a week anytime,” Starkey said of their spring workouts.
Lopez was anxious to get to full-pad workouts to find out which younger players were ready for varsity. And the scrimmage will help make the decisions clearer.
“We’ll start to get those answers,” Starkey said. “(We’ll find out) where our kids are at individually and collectively.”
For most teams, this final week will be treated more like a dress rehearsal for an actual game week, including preparation for a specific opponent instead of the being focused on internal prowess.
“We’re going to pay a little more attention to (film of an opponent),” Chavez said. “We’re going to spend more time seeing exactly what they’re doing so we can put our offense in better situations. So they won’t have to think and just get off the ball and block somebody like they’ve been taught in practice.”
Andrew Crum covers sports for The Brownsville Herald. You can reach him at (956) 982-6629 or via email at [email protected]. On Twitter he’s @andrewmcrum.