Coaches begin preparing football starting line-up and captains for next season

Off season is an important part of football. That is the time for players to grow mentally and physically. Part of preparation for the coaches is to find the hardest workers and the ones with the most improvement to lead the team.

“As soon as the season was over, we started evaluation,” coach Brad Phelps said. “We’re really looking for the guys getting bigger, faster and stronger.”

The coaches will not get to know the incoming freshmen until summer training, but so far there is a high expectation with the remaining players alone.

“The senior class is a great group of kids but it was a small class,” Phelps said. “So we will have a lot of the guys that played last season returning to the team.”

Spring football, which takes places every year after baseball ends, is the chance for players to really prove themselves to their coaches. It is one of the few opportunities to put a jersey back on before fall when the games start.

“We base our starting guys off of overall improvement during this time,” Phelps said.

The evaluation for who the team’s starters are not only comes from their off season performance but from spring football. Until coaches have seen everyone, the top players will not be decided.

“Of course we’ve got some guys in mind but we don’t want to set a name to a position yet until everyone’s had a chance to show us what they’ve got,” Phelps said.