Climate Change: Owls conduct camp at new location

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The turf at Bulleit Stadium got some extra work in this summer.

Seymour High School’s football program stayed on their grind this past week, conducting their team camp on their home field.

The location was a change up this year, especially for the sophomores and juniors on the team.

The past two seasons, the team escaped to a campground out in Mitchell the prior to the moratorium week during the Jackson County 4-H Fair.

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Each of the practices lasted for three hours in the sweltering heat. There were not two or three-a-days.

First-year Owls varsity head coach Mike Kelly said that the team worked in parts during each practice before coming together at the end as a whole.

“It was very similar to what we’ve been doing all summer,” Kelly said. “We started out with position group meetings with their coaches. Every position had a 20 minutes meeting with their coach. We then went through formations and adjustments. We had specialist practices for their positions and progressed to individual periods. We worked on fundamentals on each position. We came together for 7-on-7 and ended each practice as a team. We go to fundamentals first and then transition to individual to team stuff.”

Earlier this week, the Owls hired Joseph “Beno” Chappell as defensive coordinator. Chappell will also work as a health teacher at the high school.

“(Chappell) came to us from Florida,” Kelly said. “He’s from Kentucky, but moved down to Florida last season where he was an assistant coach and also a dean of students at a Christian high school. His mother is from northern Kentucky and has a son that lives there and another son that lives close to Cincinnati. He wanted to get closer to them, and found that Seymour is close to the middle of all of them.”

The Owls’ defense put in a lot of time with Chappell this week.

“We’ve been working on our stunts and coverages — our responsibilities,” senior strong safety Alex Holt said. “It has been a lot different than traveling to Mitchell. It’s kind of nice to stay home and go to work. (On defense) we’re starting to rally hard and play through the whistle. There’s a lot of intensity this week.

“There’s no time to mess around. We’re getting down to business.”

The offense hasn’t slowed down, either, continuing to work on the pro-style offense.

“We’re playing pretty confident,” Owls senior receiver Tyler Bullard said. “I think that a lot of teams aren’t going to be able to cover what we have.”

Holt said that there was a lot more intensity this past week.

Kelly said that he has a different approach to installing the team’s systems, which are still a work in progress.

“We’ve been focused in installing our system all summer long,” Kelly said. “We re-installed our defense again. In June, we installed most of our offense. In July, we came back and re-installed. When we come back in August we re-install again — it’s kind of philosophy that I took where I was (Fishers), and it’s very effective. It helps them understand the whole picture of things. They might not understand everything the first time, but they get more the second time and by the third time it flows a lot better.”

Yesterday, the Owls conducted a combine to test their physical fitness.

“It’s a kind of combine,” Kelly said. “Our weighting is a bench, squat, power clean and there’s also a 40-yard-dash, pro agility and vertical jump. We look at body weight and see where they are. Off that, we’re going to get goals for them in each of the exercises. We want to improve to get us where we want to be.We want to set targets that we can hit.”

Kelly said he feels good about where the team stands at this point in the season.

“We’re making progress, but still have a lot to learn,” he said. “We’re taking baby steps. Our kids are getting better and understanding more of what we’re doing. It’s just the procedures of practice that they’re getting a grasp of. Every practice is pretty similar to what we did these past four days.”

The Owls’ first game of the season is Aug. 18, when they host Evansville Harrison.

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