Beginning today, Livingston County football teams are on the clock.
After seven months of weightlifting and summer passing leagues, summer as hundreds of young men know it ends today with the start of practice for the 2016 season.
There is, as you can imagine, a bit of an adjustment involved.
“You’re just like the kids,” Pinckney coach Jakob Gailitis said at last week’s KLAA football media day. “You’ve got butterflies too, a little bit, and you want to just get out there and start. Once you start, it starts going real easy. There’s the paperwork, and you have to get that done, (but) once you hit the field it starts to flow again. It’s getting the jitters out and it’s pure fun and excitement.”
It’s also a time for coaches to not only figure out where their players are at, but who those players are.
“It’s when we find out who’s coming out,” Howell coach Aaron Metz said. “Once we get through those first two days and put pads on, then we’ll find out what we have.”
For Hartland coach Brian Savage, it’s the first day his team is together.
“We’ve had a lot of kids traveling and playing baseball and lacrosse all summer. I don’t know if we’ve had the same group of kids all the time,” he said. “We’ve seen everybody, but it’s finally time we’ll have our team together.
“We were working with groups of people and certain individuals who were there that week and gone the next, and a new group the following week so this will be nice to see us all as a team,” he continued.
“It’s a good opportunity to get all the kids in one spot and review everything you did in (team) camp,” Brighton coach Brian Lemons said. “The distractions get very small once camp starts up and they start competing for positions. So we look for them to come to practice, show how much they’ve worked and be competitive.”
It’s also a time when coaches are on tight schedules, with time of the essence. Teams have their preseason scrimmages next week, with the season starting on Aug. 25 for all but Fowlerville, which starts its season the next day.
“It’s high school football, so every year is different,” Savage said, “and it will be fun to see these kids develop.”
