Playing High School Football With Small Numbers

Playing High School Football With Small Numbers

Football coaches talk all the time about the need for depth.

Gotta have depth for competition and endurance.

But smaller high schools don't have that luxury.

We caught up with coaches from grace, lookout valley, and sale creek about the demands of playing ironman football..

Reporter:"what was maybe the fewest number of players you had a on team that you can recall in your years at grace?"

Ateca:"well since i've been at grace, we had one team that had twenty."

Reporter:"what do you do with twenty players when it comes to practice?"

Ateca:"well you have to modify a lot of what you do to play.

Do a lot of half line type drills.

As you saw the other day, we use a lot of garbage cans and pads as people."

Payne:"i don't know how many times last year that i either had to play scout team wide receiver just to make sure we had enough guys running routes."

Reporter:"have you ever had to play a position to help your team practice?"

Cox:"i'm the scout team quarterback."

Reporter:"are you a dual threat?"

Cox:"uh.

No."

Payne:"at one time started out with kids that started out the season playing running back and linebacker.

Finished out the season playing i think left tackle and nose guard."

Cox:"i've already told my two fullbacks that they're going to have to get reps at tight end because right now we don't have a tight end on our team."

Reporter:"can you ballpark how many players last year that didn't come off the field for a game?"

Payne:"four to five guys didn't come off the field."

Reporter:"how bout the fourth quarter.

Is that really the rough part of having the low numbers sometimes?"

Cox:"right now we run a mile every morning before practice.

Try to build our endurance up."

Ateca:"we can't cramp up, so we tell our kids you don't have a choice to cramp.

We try to do a lot on nutrition and make sure they keep fluids in their body prior to the event.

In basketball even if you have seven guys, and they're all little, you can go to a five guard system and survive.

But in football, if you don't have offensive and defensive linemen, it can kill you.

So in that twenty people, you better have six or seven linemen."

Payne:"we tell our guys at lookout valley hey, how many can they play with?

And how many can we play with?

They can put eleven.

I don't care if they have sixty, they can only put eleven out there.

We can put elevon on out here.

We got a saying at lookout valley.

We're all we got.

We're all we need."

The vols still don't have all the vols still don't have all they need in