BROWNSTOWN
Finally.
After a dreadfully hot summer of practices and camps, the Brownstown Central Braves’ football team was finally able to tackle each other.
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Sure, they’ve been popping pads since they were first allowed to start practicing with them but there hadn’t been any full-go tackling done until Friday night’s Red and Black Scrimmage.
Being able to tackle to the ground was a good next step in the offseason development for the Braves.
“Well, this is the first time we’ve actually been able to tackle,” Brownstown coach Reed May said. “In our team camps over at Hanover [College] and [Indiana University], we do live blocking, but we don’t do any tackling. This is the first time they can actually tackle anybody or get tackled.”
Tackling was at a premium at Friday’s towel scrimmage, where paid admission was a white towel that will be put to good use this football season.
The Braves’ classic Wing-T style of offense has evolved some this season but the same confused defenders made it tough to find the ball carrier at times.
Occasionally varsity, JV or freshmen tailbacks were able to spring open a big run for a score much to the delight of the Brownstown faithful, who were in middle-of-the-season mode with fans lining Elm Street behind the football stadium.
Not everything went smoothly though as Reed and his staff continued to work out some issues with the offense.
Brownstown lost several key seniors from last year’s team and, while they have 18 this year, many players will be stepping into full-time varsity roles for the first time.
“We’ve got 18 seniors but we’ve got a lot of inexperienced seniors,” Reed said. “We’ve just got to get more experience because, even though we have 18 seniors, a lot of them didn’t play a lot last year.”
Still, Reed doesn’t seem to worried about their progression.
“We’ve got a good group of seniors, a good number and we’ve just got to get better football wise,” Reed said. “I’d call us football illiterate right now; we’ve got to get football literate.”
Brownstown split up their teams to be a mix of varsity, JV and freshmen so they could all get their shot at some playing time. Reed explained he thought it was pretty evenly matched on the field but would reserve judgement until after he broke down the film.
The Braves have one last tuneup before the season officially begins on August 23. They’ll travel to Jennings County with the hopes of pounding out the rest of the details against the Panthers.
The scrimmage is set to begin at 7 p.m. on Friday, August 16 at the Jennings County High School football field.