Countdown Is On For Gridiron Hopefuls

High school football players and coaches from all over Platte County have been waiting all summer for last week, when preseason camps were held. The camps served as an unofficial start to the season and the first real chance to gauge where teams are in regards to progress. Teams around the state can officially begin practice on Aug. 10, but all have been working since the beginning of the year and in some cases since the end of last season.

“Since about two weeks after the season was over in November,” said Park Hill South head coach Ron Litchfield, who is entering his eighth season with the Panthers.

Weightlifting and conditioning is almost a year-round activity for local programs. Over the summer, players and coaches attended team camps at college universities, held mini-camps and participated in 7-on-7 leagues, and there has already been a great deal of work done when it comes to technique and scheme. For many teams, camp serves as a tune-up for what will happen the first week of practice.

“You always work on fundamentals, but we also want to get most of our offense in,” Platte County head coach Bill Utz said.

Following are brief reports from area high school football camps.

PARK HILL & PARK HILL SOUTH

Observers of each camp will notice a big difference in the two teams’ offensive schemes. Park Hill will focus on a game plan which will feature a physical run attack and will go after teams with more of a power football approach, while Park Hill South’s main emphasis is speed mixed in with a healthy dose of both running and passing.

Park Hill head coach Greg Reynolds is starting his 10th season leading the Trojan football program and has generally maintained the same philosophy in regards to offensive scheme.

“We’ve been the same type of team where we try to be more physical, but now we’re more abnormal because teams are starting to use the more open and spread offensive sets,” he said.

Both teams focused on a wide range of areas throughout the last week, particularly stressing technique and fundamentals they have been working on for some time. Litchfield sees camp as a big review of what many of the players have already learned.

“There won’t be anything new this week,” he said. “We like to give our players the big picture of our schemes all at once, and then when practice starts, break those into smaller details.”

Last year, the Missouri State High School Activities Association expanded the playoff brackets in each class by adding an additional game. State championship games continue to be played on Thanksgiving weekend in St. Louis , but there is now one week less of practice available to teams between their first week of practice and the first game of the season. This takes time and focus away from some areas of the game.

“I’m usually not a big believer that you can practice past two and a half hours and have success, but we have to now,” Reynolds said.

Before school starts Aug. 17, the two teams will have very different practice schedules. Park Hill will only have one day where there will be two practices taking place and they will both be on the first morning. Three-hour practices will be held in the afternoon the rest of the first week for the Trojans. Park Hill South will use the late afternoons and evenings for their practices with conditioning and two-a-day practices taking place a majority of the first week.

PLATTE COUNTY

Utz, in his second year as head coach, said he is a bit more comfortable as the season approaches than he was last year. In 2008, Utz not only took over for a football coach who won 191 games and three state titles in 20 years, but also presided over a program that moved from Class 3 to Class 4 and changed conferences.

“By the very nature of this being the second year, I think we’re all a little more comfortable and know what to expect,” Utz said.

Platte County had approximately 80 players on the field for last week’s camp, though only 15 are seniors.

“Last year, we had 25 seniors, so that’s quite a loss of experience,” he said.

Utz said having such a young team — many of the juniors on the squad have no or little varsity experience — means the Pirates’ coaching staff is doing a lot of teaching.

“We are working on a lot of fundamentals and just getting better each day,” he said.

One of the big decisions facing Utz is naming a starting quarterback. Last season, seniors Jeff Cline and Matt Howard-Darling split time at the position before Utz made Howard-Darling the permanent starter. This year, Utz said Platte County may field its first-ever freshman starting quarterback — Howard-Darling’s brother, Jordan, who is 6-feet, two-inches tall and weighs 215 pounds.

“It’s between him and sophomore Krea Kelso,” Utz said.

Kelso is new to the program, having moved into the district over the summer.

Now, with the preseason camp behind them, Utz and his staff are gearing up for Aug. 10.

“It’s been a good camp — we are where we need to be,” Utz said.

Previews of North and West Platte Football can be found in the print edition ot The Platte County Citizen.

Jerry Keuhn, Lee Stubbs, and Matt Pepper all contributed to this story.