Published: May 21, 2008 01:10 pm            

Jackets hold final practice before today’s scrimmage

With spring practices complete after today’s scrimmage at Yellow Jacket Stadium, Cleburne head coach Phil Young and his staff will have to wait until two-a-days in August to see their players in pads again.

But the Jackets are “right on schedule” according to Young after 17 practices.

“I think expectation-wise we’ve accomplished most of the things we wanted to get done,” Young said. “We had a pretty extensive list of things we wanted to accomplish coming into the spring and most of those are checked off. It does not mean we’ve arrived. We have a lot of work to do in the summer before two-a-days.”

During the summer, Cleburne players will be expected to follow a conditioning program and stay in shape, but the coaching staff will not attempt to micro-manage the lives of their players during their summer vacation.

“I think nowadays it’s too easy to overwhelm the kids with a lot of stuff,” Young said. “Let kids be kids. Let them eat snow cones, go get their bikes and jump ramps and go fishing and skiing and go have fun at Splash Station. So I don’t get too uptight about having too much stuff.

“The thing I will overemphasize to all our kids, 9-12, is the summer conditioning program. We’ll really hammer them about being here.”

Defensively, Young said speed kills, and his squad has plenty of it.

“Defensively, the thing that is most obvious to me is the speed on the field right now,” Young said. “It’s hard to get the edge on us. The thing our defense does is to get off the blocks and get to the ball in a hurry. We tell them to arrive at the ball with a bad attitude as quick as you can.”

Young said he wants his players to play a physical, aggressive brand of football and encourages his players to hit hard and often. Coaches have been handing out big hit stickers to the players during spring practices as an incentive.

“We gave a lot of those [stickers] out to a lot of different kids,” Young said. “I’ve seen a lot of hitting by a lot of different kids, instead of a select few. We don’t want an aristocracy of hitters — a select elite group of hitters and everybody else just shows up and jumps on the pile. We want a mob mentality.”

During Young’s tenure as head coach, he has seen the defense evolve from a unit that featured one or two hitters into one where everybody is willing and able to drop the hammer on an opposing ball carrier.

“Two years ago we had a few hitters that stood out because they were the few,” Young said. “Last year we had quite a few hitters and I expect next year that you should stand out if you aren’t a hitter. There should be so many hitters that you should stand out if you aren’t one of those guys.

“If you aren’t hitting, people in the bleachers will go ‘What’s wrong with that guy? Why isn’t he being aggressive and making hits?’”

        

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