Warren

Prepped and ready

By Brad D. Bates
C & G Sports Writer

High school football teams relish season before the season

WARREN — While other fall athletes have a little more than a week from their first practice to their first potential contest, high school football teams in Michigan get 17 days to get ready.

And they need every last one of them.

“It’s felt that the nature of the sport demands more practice than other sports,” Michigan High School Athletic Association Communications Director John Johnson said. “People say football is different, and it is.”

Football is also the only MHSAA-sponsored sport with a mandatory three-day conditioning period before any physical contact is allowed.

“Conditioning is everything,” Birmingham Seaholm coach Chris Fahr said on the first day of practice. “We’ll condition these kids in these three days seven times — seven hard conditioning sessions. You have to be in great shape, especially with our numbers down a little bit.

“You can’t get tired out there. A tired football player is a useless football player.”

The early process serves as a chance for players to get their legs under them, as well as a time to build team camaraderie.

“From these (three) days, I really think our team can bond,” Birmingham Seaholm senior Keith Otterbein said.

“(We) start getting a feel for each other. We have a lot of young guys on the team this year, and I think they can learn from these (three) days, from the older guys.”


It’s important that young players learn the varsity ropes and get to know their teammates before contact, because once contact starts, practices take on a different feel.

“They’re tentative, some are aggressive and some are very nervous,” Utica Stevenson coach Rick Bye said of his players when they put on pads for the first time.

An inevitable consequence when starting contact is injury, and it’s through those first days that players are reminded what football season feels like.

“The first day, you really have to get over the initial stingers in the neck,” Warren De La Salle senior captain Steve O’Shell said. “It’s a big adjustment, not only the first day, but for the first week.”

One of the keys and benefits of football’s long preseason is that it give players time to adjust to the aches and pains, and get in the specific shape they need to be in to avoid more serious injuries.

“They’re in cardio shape, but hitting and getting the bumps and bruises, there’s game shape,” De La Salle coach Paul Verska said.

“That quick burst — a two- or three-second burst with 15 or 20 seconds rest in between — it’s a different kind of conditioning. It’s football condition as opposed to cardio condition.”

There is one final part of the preseason that allows coaches to see how far their team has come with conditioning, bonding and adjusting to the rigors of football — the scrimmage.

Scrimmages show whether or not players are in game shape and are executing before the first of nine regular-season games.

“The scrimmage is your benchmark game,” O’Shell said. “It’s the first time you get to measure yourself up against other teams. And it’s a good idea to see where we are at this point.”

And getting the chance to hit live opponents rather than teammates is a fringe benefit of the scrimmage and a fitting way to end the preseason.

“We stay up in practice, and we’re not taking anyone down, because we don’t want anyone getting hurt,” O’Shell said. “(The scrimmage) is the first chance we get to go full bore and see what we’ve got.”

You can reach C & G Sports Writer Brad D. Bates at bbates@candgnews.com or at (586)498-1029.