Wildcats to put on pads this week
El Dorado's football team will kick off practice next week. Coach Chris Hill said his team might be ahead of the game as far as installation of the basic gameplan.
“We pretty much have everything installed. We're tweaking a couple of things here and there. But for the most part, it's just polish up and get better - get better technique-wise and assignment-wise. We don't do anything to shoot ourselves in the foot,” said Hill, who said the defense is also ready.
“We've pretty much got all of it installed. We got a lot accomplished this summer. Right now, we just need to put the pads on. Nothing worse than trying to play defense when you can't tackle nobody. We feel like as far as install and stuff, we're in good shape there. It's just time to put the pads on and see who can be physical and who can tackle.” As far as the physicality?
“It'll be live up front and what we call thud on the ball carrier, not take him all the way to the ground.”
Hill said the Wildcats will put the pads on Wednesday, beginning with practice at 8 in the morning. Special teams will be a focus.
“We will spend a lot of time on special teams next week,” he said. “That's one of those deals, your special teams will be all of your athletes, guys who can run and get down the field and tackle and guys that can block. Coach Townsend did a great job with special teams last year. Don't expect anything different this year. He's going to have the special teams ready. You know it was the difference in some ball games last year.”
El Dorado will host North Little Rock in a benefit game on Aug. 23 before taking on Little Rock Christian in the season opener on Aug. 30 at Memorial Stadium.
“We've had a really good summer,” said Hill. “We've got kids who got their workouts in. We ask them to get 24 during the summer. We've got several kids over 30. We've had a really good summer, got better each week at team camp and 7-on-7. We had about as good a summer as we hoped for.”