By Chuck Reherman
Sports Editor
Yukon begins its second season of the Jeremy Reed era Monday, when the Millers take the field for pre-season drills.
The team begins practice at 5:30 a.m. until 8 a.m. and comes back for an evening session from 4-5:30 p.m. The Millers will workout with that same schedule all week and will hold media day on that Saturday.
Reed is expecting around 100 players when the team opens drills and the Millers return a solid nucleus on both sides of the ball.
“We still have some things we need to get clearned up coaching staff-wise and get prepared,” Reed aid. “We are about 90-percent ready to get the season started, but that 10-percent is pretty important. The coaching staffed has worked from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m., but by Monday we will be ready to rock and roll.
“We spent the first two days this past week we spent the entire day pouring into out middle school program, getting them prepared for their season, that is important,” he said. “We did get our coaching staff filled and are ready to go.”
The Millers added YHS alum Brayden Meyer, Logan Thomas, Josh Ray and Josh Collier to their staff. Three of the four are defensive coaches and Collier is a receivers coach.
The Millers will work the first four days in helmets and shorts and will be able to put the pads on for the first time on Friday.
“We can only be in helmets, so we have our first four days of practice already scripted,” Reed said. “We will do a lot of re-install, some discipline stuff so just to make sure we set the tone for who we are. We know who we are, but we need to set the tone early in practice of how discipline we have to be.
“We will compete a little bit against each other throwing the football in seven-on-seven and basically just start over,” he said. “The players know our expectations, know all the schemes we are doing, but each year we feel it is important and start from ground zero, basically re-teach things.
“Every time we start a new season, whether it is spring or fall, we always start over from ground zero. We feel like that is the importance of what we are doing.”
The Millers will work out in pads beginning Friday and go with some limited contact work and added a evening practice on Saturday.
“We may do some live stuff, but it will be pretty controlled,” Reed said. “We may do some half-lune stuff, we set up the spring to be physical on purpose because we knew we didn’t want to be real physical in the fall.
“We will be limited in contact because our philosophy in fall practices and getting ready for a first scrimmage and a zero week football game,” he said. “And even though, we have that zero week game, were were looking way ahead and did a lot of things in the spring that I normally wouldn’t have done to help prepare us for the fall. I feel like we are in a great place, our kids are in great shape, probably the best shape I have had a team coming in.
“We will operate as normal. Most people in pre-season practice go multiple hours and I have as well. We will just go our normal two and half hours, we feel that is what we need. We will come back in afternoons for meetings, watch film lift and stretch good and get them out of here.”
The Millers will open the season earlier than they ever have, playing in the zero week, YHS opens the season Aug. 24 hosting Edmond North. It will be the first time in nearly 40 years that the Millers have not played Mustang in their season opener. YHS and Mustang will play on Aug. 31. The Millers other non-district game is Sept. 7 at home with Moore.
YHS opens the district slate against Norman on Sept. 21 (the Millers have a bye week Sept. 14). YHS will also have six home games.
YHS will have only one scrimmage this season on Aug. 17 at Stillwater.
The Millers are back in District 6A-1 with Ed mond Memorial, Broken Arrow, Jenks, Edmond Santa Fe, Enid, Norman and Westmoore.
An experienced Miller team finished their off-season work with the annual lift-a-thon even
The lift-a-thon went smooth,” Reed said. “It went really well doing it here at the high school. The coaches told me we had good max weights and had a lot of kids did well in areas.
“It was a good end to a successful summer,” he added. “We saw a lot of improvement from the players.”
