Gonzales ‘crisp’ in first scrimmage

GONZALES — Football teams are not expected to look like a state-championship contending team. Though head coach Kodi Crane would admit that the Apaches are nowhere near that, he was pleased with how his football team looked last Friday against the speedy Yoakum Bulldogs.

“I think we’re in a good starting point,” Crane said. “If you look at the crispness and precision of what we’re doing offensively and defensively I think we’re lightyears ahead of where we were the last two years at the first scrimmage.”

The coaches opted to cut the field in half to start the scrimmage, with one side running one-on-one wide receivers versus defensive backs drills and the other side running goal line plays. Then the teams ran full offense versus defense plays where Yoakum scored on a long play on third-and-short while the Apaches scored their lone touchdown on a goal line throw from quarterback Garrett Rickman to Aaron Hunt.

Crane was impressed with Rickman’s composure Friday, specifically during Yoakum blitzes.

“[Yoakum are] in man-free coverage and they’re going to bring blitzes almost every play,” he explained. “[Rickman] stood there, stepped up in the pocket…he threw some good vertical dep balls. I thought it was phenomenal.”

As always with a scrimmage, the Apaches had a few blunders, including that touchdown that was given up.

“Obviously I think there are a ton of things that we’ve got to improve,” Crane said. “Our pass protection, our run blocking. Their one touchdown that they had in the scrimmage part was on a blitz. We blitzed them on third and short and we cannot give up a big play on a blitz.”

Though at the time Crane hadn’t seen all the film, he did highlight a few players like Hunt, Wade Miller, Juan Licea and Matthew Velasquez-Banda has Apaches who stuck out to him in the scrimmage.

This week the Apaches will travel to Austin for a scrimmage against Austin Eastside Memorial. This won’t be the last time Gonzales will see that school as they were placed in the same district for non-football sports. Despite all of that, Crane wants to see just one thing after that scrimmage.

“Get better,” he said. “All I care about is we improve. This is a process.”

“I just want to see us improve as a football team. If our kids improve as a football player throughout the course of the week then that means we improve as a football team.”