By Jason Avery
News-Times Staff
Junction City’s first two days of practice have been a refresher course to make sure everyone is on the same page.
“We’ve done the same thing for the last two days,” Junction City coach David Carpenter said.
“Doing group work, just going back and really starting over and refresh and memory. All of the little things that you start out practice with on both offense and defense.
“Just making sure everybody remembers what we went over and tried to learn in the spring and work on conditioning.”
Carpenter added that more drill work was in the offing for Wednesday’s practice.
“We’re going to do the same thing that we’ve been doing,” Carpenter said. “We’re slowly adding in as we do all of these little things, but we’re going to stay with the same schedule.”
As far as numbers, Carpenter believes the Dragons are about where they’ll be for the year.
“We’ve been hanging right at 30,” Carpenter said. “I think that’s where we’re going to be. The guys have been working hard.”
One area the coaches have been focused on is trying to sandwich as much work in as possible with Junction City’s Week 0 showdown against Harmony Grove coming in three weeks as opposed to years past where schools would have an extra week to get ready.
“When you did all of that, that led you to being able to add and do a few other things. Going on Week 0, you have got to accelerate everything by a week and a half,” Carpenter said.
“You hope by the time you get into pads and start doing everything, you’re at that correct spot where you know everything is.”
As the season draws closer, Carpenter said there is plenty of enthusiasm about the 2022 season.
“That’s what it is. Football is here and lets go play and do all this,” Carpenter said. “When the seniors finish up practice and we go get our weights and all of that good stuff in, they’ll watch the junior high because we practice them after the seniors.
“The quarterbacks jump in with the quarterback drills, helping the younger guys out. They’re excited about what we’re doing. That’s the fun part. Everybody’s trying to contribute as much as they can.”