Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Seven-on-seven lets teams get in limited work
PORTALES — This was one of those times where there was room to get it right.
There will be plenty more times, plenty of preseason practices and scrimmages between Friday’s Seven-on-Seven Tournament and Lineman Challenge at Greyhound Stadium and the start of high school football season late next month. But Friday was a fairly important preseason milepost, a chance for coaches to see what’s good, what’s bad, what needs tweaking, how their skill players might be looking early.
“It works our timing, works our coverage,” Fort Sumner head coach Brad Holland said. “It’s good for our secondary receivers, backs. It’s a good deal.”
In late August and beyond, the dress rehearsals will be over. So Friday’s tournament was a very ‘good deal’ indeed. Though Clovis didn’t participate, several other local schools did. Among the smaller ones, Holland’s Fort Sumner team. Among the larger, Portales.
The Rams were able to reach the big-school division semifinals and lost to Roswell. But that didn’t matter much, because these games won’t count toward Portales’ regular-season record. This was a chance for the coaches to observe their skill players ahead of practice and a chance for those players to click.
“I think this is the first time we’ve come together as a group; our boys have been working (at jobs) and stuff like that,” Portales head coach Jaime Ramirez said. “I thought we competed well and fought hard. There are a lot of timing issues. Our route-running wasn’t as sharp. Our catching of the ball wasn’t great. And some of our decision-making wasn’t great. We need to improve on that. But I thought our kids played hard, competed well, which is always a good thing. ... I like the effort from the kids all the way around.”
For Texico’s Bob Gilbreath, who was leading players into the tournament for the first time as Wolverines head coach, there was a lot to like, a lot to work on.
“We’ve got a good nucleus of young kids doing the right things,” Gilbreath said. “And I’m excited about what I think we can do down the road. We have some kids that have the ability to make plays. Right now, our precision, our execution on the offense being new, is not what it needs to be. But we’re doing a lot of good things.”
For Holland, it was pretty simple.
“We’re young, we got better,” he said. “We came here to get better. I think we did.”
Eastern New Mexico football coaches and players helped out with aspects of the tournament. Among those Greyhounds was offensive lineman Braeden Loftus, who will be a senior this coming season.
“We were mostly reffing and keeping score,” Loftus said as the day was winding down. “Making sure the sportsmanship is there, player safety is going how it’s supposed to.”
Loftus was happy to help.
“It’s exciting,” he said. “The kids are hungry.”
Teams were separated into three divisions and assured five pool play games before being seeded into a single elimination tournament with championship games taking place inside Greyhound Stadium.
For Portales, semifinalist status was inconsequential.
“We really want to just take this as a learning point,” Ramirez said. “It’s not real football, you don’t have any of your o-linemen. As your o-line goes, so does your team. We just look at this as an opportunity to compete together and play together. I want to see how they handle adversity, how they play together, how they come together, how they mesh as a team.”
Gilbreath echoed that.
“It’s kind of unrealistic, seven-on-seven, because you don’t have the big boys up front blocking and the pass rush coming at you,” he said. “But more than anything, I think it gives a chance for the kids to play together, for the kids to face some adversity together. That’s the best way for you to grow.”
Perhaps the biggest adversity for all teams attending was triple-digit temperatures in the afternoon. All involved had to take precautions.
“A lot of water,” Holland said. “As much shade as you can get ’em into.”