By Chuck Reherman
Sports Editor
A young, but experienced Southwest Covenant opens the pre-season Monday with a pair of workouts.
The Patriots will begin their quest for a run at the class C state title again with a solid nucleus on both offense and defense.
SWCS will work out from 7-9:30 a.m. and from 7:30-9 p.m. for the first three days, then go to regular season practice with the beginning of school on Thursday.
“Those first few days are kind of hard since you can’t have contact in shorts and helmets,” SWCS head coach Trey Cloud said. “We will work on getting our timing down and work on conditioning.
“They should be in pretty good shape, we had a good summer workout program and we will have a conditioning test when they report,” he said. “We can go from there to see about getting them into playing shape.”
Cloud will be looking for players to step into roles that were lost to graduation. The Patriots do have quarterback Ben Webb back to build the offense around. Tyler Kelly returns at runningback and Will Haas at receiver. That trio combined for more than 50 touchdowns last year.
“We feel like we can pick up where we left off in the spring,” Cloud said. “We have a lot of guys that may not have started, but they played a lot of downs last year, so they know what is going on.
“I was pleased with how they reacted to what I threw at them in the spring and I look for them to pick it right up when we start this week,” he said. “We will work this week on trying to get the younger players more comfortable with what we are doing.
“We feel we can be a balanced team with run and pass. We have some players that we feel can step in and handle that.”
