Some would say it isn’t really springtime until those football pads are popping and the sound of a coach’s whistling blends in with the birds’. Since all three Plant City-area schools played in spring games Thursday, May 21, it must be springtime.
Those local athletes are about to hear a lot from their coaches over the next few months, with offseason practices now in full swing and lessons learned from each spring game performance. The games showed that each team has a lot of work to do, even if some of the on-field results weren’t negative.
DURANT
The Durant Cougars made no secret of their game plan in 2014: pounding the rock until there were six points added to the board. With dynamic athletes like Erick Davis and Crispian Atkins handling much of that load, it was doable. But both are gone, and it’s up to the coaching staff to adapt.
The key here isn’t finding a replacement for Davis, or creating one out of another position player. Durant is, for the moment, putting its confidence behind Noah Johnson, who is essentially the opposite of Davis: a pro-style pocket passer. In the spring game against Newsome, head coach Mike Gottman opened up the passing game a bit, and Johnson went 6-for-9 with 35 passing yards in the team’s one half of action.
With a pocket passer now in the mix, it’s imperative that Durant gets more comfortable throwing the ball than it was last season. And with big targets in Garrett Rentz and Joe Williamson now out of the picture, Johnson and the team will have their work cut out for them this offseason.
PLANT CITY
As the only team to win its spring game, Plant City probably has the fewest question marks of the three programs.
It was the only school with a coaching change, but having hired from within, there hasn’t been any adjustment period for the players.
On offense, every skill player who played a key role in 2014 (with the exception of graduating senior Austin Carswell) will be back. The coaching staff is pleased with the way quarterback Corey King has developed in the offseason, and it looks like he’ll have full control of the QB1 spot. The team is losing some key defensive players to graduation, but the Raiders have had a great track record of developing talent on that side of the ball for at least a few years now.
Plant City’s top two offseason goals, according to head coach Greg Meyer, are becoming more fundamentally sound and developing mental toughness. No team in the area fell victim to more penalties in 2014 than the Raiders, and Plant City’s tendency to make mistakes certainly cost the squad a win or two. Should the Raiders figure out how to get their heads in the right place, things look promising for 2015.
STRAWBERRY CREST
Coming off of a 1-9 season, Strawberry Crest players and coaches knew that the offseason was going to be a grind. It’s certainly a bigger grind than most teams will have to deal with, as the team lost quarterback Tristan Hyde, top wideout Clay Cullins, defensive captain Josh Engram and sleeper surprise running back Arjay Smith to graduation, among others.
The good news is that inexperience, arguably the Chargers’ biggest problem in 2014, shouldn’t be as much of a factor anymore. The freshmen and sophomores, who made up the biggest chunk of the roster, saw a full season’s worth of game action and appear to have learned from it. Ball movement against Plant City’s stout defense wasn’t too much of a problem May 21, and incoming sophomore quarterback Tate Whatley appears to be progressing along as the coaches have hoped.
Much like Plant City, the Chargers are fine-tuning their fundamentals this offseason above many other things. The most pressing issue for the team is at wide receiver. Crest has gotten great seasons from just one wideout at a time the past few years. With a young quarterback at the helm, the team needs to have several impact players at the position to make a difference. Whatley will have a few 6-footers to work with, including returning senior A.J. Quinn, Tyler Hood and Chase Lawson.
Contact Justin Kline at jkline@plantcityobserver.com.
GO TO THE GUIDE
The Plant City Times & Observer will have end-of-summer reports from each program in the annual Football Guide. Included in the guide: All-Area teams, potential sleepers to watch and everything else fans need to know to be ready for anything in the 2015 season.