Thursday, Jul. 03, 2008

Mustangs Wrap Up 7-on-7 Play

Football Journal

By John English

Contributing Writer

Things did not go as well as planned in the final 7-on-7 competition of the season for the Grapevine football team, but assistant coach Rocky Jones said he is still very pleased with how the season went.

Grapevine defeated Northwest but lost to Plano East and Brewer last Friday to finish 1-2 in the tournament, and Jones said his team made a lot of mistakes in the competition.

"The tournament was a double-elimination," Jones said. "We won our first game, but then we dropped two, and we were out of it. I believe we finished in fourth place overall in the league, but we were very inconsistent in the last tournament. We dropped a lot of passes in the competition, and you can’t do that in 7-on-7 games."

Jones said, reflecting on the season as a whole, he was very pleased with how things unfolded.

"It was a very productive season," Jones said. "We saw a lot of good things. What we did was, we played a lot of kids. Basically, not any of our skills kids are coming back, so we rotated our quarterbacks, we rotated our receivers, and we played a lot of different people, so a lot of different people got valuable playing experience. We got to see how they reacted and come through in pressure situations.

"It just gave us a better idea going into some two-a-days of some kids that had established themselves in certain positions, but there are still quite a few spots open."

Jones said there are four players in the running for the starting quarterback position, but said he would rather not name them at this point.

Jones said the objectives were pretty straightforward going into the season and said he believes his team achieved exactly what it was hoping to achieve as it headed into 7-on-7 play.

"We accomplished what we were looking for," Jones said. "We accomplished all of our goals in terms of getting the kids together, and throwing the football and catching the football and competing. It was a good way to get ready for the season."