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Scrimmage season brings summer football schedule into focus for Putnam County schools
It may not be August yet but with the 2022-23 sports year all but over, the teams taking shape for the 2023-24 school year are ramping up their efforts as the summer begins in earnest.
All four Putnam County football teams took part in scrimmages in the past week as Greencastle and Cloverdale held a joint scrimmage while South Putnam took to the road to see Danville and North Putnam hosted two schools outside the schedule for a three-way scrimmage in Crawfordsville and Clinton Prairie.
Each session ran for around two hours of time for those involved with slightly different schedules at each event.
Greencastle and Cloverdale started with varsity and JV 11-on-11 sets before splitting into a session of 7-on-7 work for quarterbacks, running backs and receivers while the linemen worked drills against one another before a second session of 11-on-11 work.
South Putnam and Danville had a similar look though started with a modified 7-on-7 that focused on running plays while skill players had 1-on-1 drills, followed by a traditional 7-on-7 with linemen working in group drills before moving into two sessions of 11-on-11 scrimmages for varsity and JV.
North Putnam had varsity and JV 11-on-11 sessions broken into three hour-long sets with the Cougars scrimmaging with Crawfordsville in the first set, the Athenians and Clinton Prairie in the second set and Gophers and hosts in the final session.
All four coaches were pleased with the efforts their teams put in during the week and shared their thoughts on how their teams were progressing to this point in the summer.
Greencastle
The Tiger Cubs have had a lot on their plate early on as new head coach Dave Stephens and his staff have been quick to get through the playbook before the end of June.
“Summer has been good,” Stephens said. “The kids have been very receptive. We’ve thrown a lot at them in terms of scheme and new techniques.
“The kids are taking to things well and are working through the frustrations of the learning process. We’re pretty happy with the way things have gone so far.”
A team that has a mix of experienced players and new faces at several positions, Stephens said the scrimmage against Cloverdale highlighted several positives the staff had seen thought the start of work during the summer.
“It was a good night,” Stephens said after the scrimmage with the Clovers. “You are who you are every day; we’ve had some inconsistencies at times and times where we looked very explosive.
“I was impressed with our offensive and defensive lines. They showed the gains they’ve made in the weight room in the offseason and were very physical. Our skill guys are coming along as they grasp the things we want from them.
“For it being June 13, I’d give it a solid A on where we’re at for this time of the year,” Stephens added.
Even with several players unavailable for the scrimmage, Stephens said the front lines were one of the strong points of the night.
“Those guys are doing well,” Stephens said. “Some of them don’t know any different. We’ve had some injuries on the line so we have some backups that we project as backups week one in there.
“Everyone comes in with a positive attitude. We have some freshmen in there, two on the offensive line, and are excited with the way the kids are adapting to everything and held up physically.”
Much like North Putnam last year, a new coaching staff and system is being put in place with a freshman signal caller taking center stage as Cole Stephens took the snaps against Cloverdale.
As the son of the head coach, Stephens will have a leg up on most rookie quarterbacks by knowing the system well before stepping on to the field but coach Stephens said he had to do the same things every other successful quarterback has to do in order to earn the trust of his new teammates.
“It’s always hard when you’re a young guy and there’s a lot of older guys who have been around and been through the trials,” Stephens said. “Cole is doing a great job of working in with his teammates.
“He came in very humble and is doing a good job of being a coach on the field. There are times where he’s getting guys lined up, getting splits and feet correct, helping guys with what their responsibilities are and his teammates appreciate that he knows that answer for them.
“It’s helped build a little respect for him because him being out there helps them do their job a little better,” Stephens added. “There’s a natural rapport being built up and while there were some freshman mistakes, being a little slow on a read and some incomplete passes, I credit Cloverdale playing a cover-one defense that meant windows were smaller.
“There were some big plays but not as many of the five-yard and 10-yard chunk plays I’d like to get.”
Greencastle will be involved in the Wabash Valley 7-on-7 and Big Man competition this weekend and has a pair of scrimmages set for July, at which time Stephens said the team would be retracing their steps on offense before settling in for the upcoming season.
“We’re going to keep installing things and by the end of June, we’ll have 95 percent of our offense installed,” Stephens said. “After Moratorium Week, we hit the install all over again, going through things again.
“We throw a lot at the guys fast and then catch things as we go, perfecting things as the summer goes on. Once we get to August, we’re repeating the same things over and over again.
“Eighty-five percent of the things we do week-to-week are the same, we’re just executing it really, really well,” Stephens added. “That’s what we’ll hang our hat on in the season.”
Cloverdale
The other half of the intra-Putnam County scrimmage, the Clovers will have the look of a team that’s softly hitting the reset button after last season as head coach Tyler Lotz has another fresh-faced group to work with.
“It’s been alright,” Lotz said about the start of the summer workouts. “We’ve had a lot of numbers, between 32 and 40 kids every night.
“We have a lot of new faces, which sounds a lot like last year’s team. Looking at the team photo, we have 14 of the same kids this year.
“It’s a lot like last year in that we’re teaching these kids how to play football, teaching them how to get into a stance having not been in one before and things like that,” Lotz added. “Summer is huge for us; last year, we didn’t scrimmage against anybody but this year, I felt like they needed to see somebody else and hopefully this will help them see what they need to improve on.”
The initial lack of experience was evident along the offensive line as Cloverdale did not have a returning lineman on the field.
It was a learning experience according to Lotz with the players getting an eye-opening experience early in the summer.
“It’s tough when you have five new guys out there,” Lotz pointed out. “The one returner we have is currently out for the whole month of June.
“We were rotating guys around as three of the guys are new to football and the other two just don’t have much experience. It’s a learning curve for them and hopefully they learned some things they need to work on in practice.”
Once in the 7-on-7 portion, the Clover skill players had more chances to get involved and Lotz liked a lot of what he saw.
“Skill wise, we have a good group of skill players,” Lotz said. “It’s about me being able to put them in positions to have success. They are a talented group; it’s about putting them into positions to win, whether it’s a game, a situation, a play or a scheme.
“Going into tonight, we only had one play installed with three practices. We threw in a couple of wrinkles on that play and that’s why it looked bland and basic.”
The Clovers also have two more scrimmages scheduled this summer with Lotz knowing the players needed both time to learn the game while also getting a chance to see other teams in action.
“We just need to get better every day,” Lotz said. “We need to attack things on the field, continue to work hard in the weight room and continue to work on technique and the fundamentals of the game.”
South Putnam
An experienced Eagle squad took on tough competition at Danville, a team that had its own struggles a year ago yet still reached a sectional final by avenging two of its regular season losses.
Head coach Chuck Sorrell said the team picked up where it left off, quickly plugging holes left by a solid group of graduates and gave as good as they got against the Warriors.
“We’ve had a good summer,” Sorrell said. “We’ve been getting stronger. I like going against really good teams; I coached (Danville head coach Jayme) Comer in high school and getting to the trust we have with each other to give our guys a good look is a good thing.
“This is a lot better than hitting each other and the young guys because young needs to hit young and old needs to hit old. From what I saw, we looked pretty good for June 14.”
Part of South Putnam’s ability to stand toe-to-toe with Danville was the continued ability to plug and play on the offensive line with Sorrell noting the newcomers were holding their own against a Warrior team that had multiple defensive line packages running in and out.
“We’ve rebuilt the offensive line,” Sorrell said. “We have three juniors, a sophomore and a freshman on there and three of the five have played a lot.
“The two new ones stepping in there are strong enough to be able to play with anyone in our league.”
Junior quarterback Wyatt Mullin looked polished in each phase of the scrimmage while Sorrell said the defense got looks it hadn’t seen before but was still able to adapt to the changes, a key factor with several parts of the defensive backfield having to be replaced.
“Wyatt has really worked hard and has a chance to be one of the best quarterbacks in the state of Indiana,” Sorrell noted. “We want to keep him underrated but we have a chance.
“We’re getting better with our skill guys and secondary. (Danville) gave us some formations we haven’t worked on as we’ve worked a lot on spread and they came out with tight ends we haven’t seen yet.
“We’ll work on that because we’ll get it against Owen Valley and some other teams,” Sorrell added. “We’re getting there.”
North Putnam
A morning of scrimmages between the Cougars, Athenians and Gophers got testy at times but head coach Scott Moore said the team kept it together and showed some promising signs.
“Overall, it was a pretty good morning, especially for our first scrimmages of the summer,” Moore said. “We had a good camp week and a good finish to today.
“We did a lot of good things. There are a lot of things we have to work on as we watch the film, some mental and physical mistakes we made that have to be fixed by August, but overall, I’m happy with where we’re at.
“We moved the ball, defensively we played well having some base stuff in and the kids did a good job of being ready to play,” Moore added.
North Putnam had several seniors in the skill positions as well as others who moved to plug holes from the prior year, leaving the Cougars with several holes to fill though Moore said those players stepping in were getting off to a good start.
“The kids are adjusting well,” Moore said. “We had to play some young guys last year, so we have some guys with experience and still a lot of eligibility left, which is good.
“The senior class last year did a good job of laying a foundation for us and a lot of them are tough to replace. The kids understand they have to accept the challenge, be ready to go and we’ll formulate our approach to what we have and what fits us well.”
Having Christian Kramer return behind center was a boost according to Moore as the sophomore signal caller commanded the offense well.
“It’s been awesome,” Moore said about Kramer’s work with the newer players. “(Christian) has a better understanding of the offense, he understands what’s supposed to be going on and can be an extra coach on the field.
“He’s still young, so he’s working on how to be a leader, but he’s doing a great job in the locker room and in practice being more comfortable, which is showing.”
While there were still kinks to work out, Moore said having things in place for a full year meant the players were quick to pick up on things and had the time to get those things right over the next few weeks.
“We have to get back to doing the little things the right way,” Moore said. “With having a year in the system and spring ball, we were able to install a lot of things, so now we have to fine-tune things.
“We need to find things to get a little better at and just keep working to perfect our craft as we continue into June and July.”