Messich notes that small schools must adapt to having fewer players By Adam Brewer
Sometimes the hardest thing about football is having enough players, and for some local Class A and AA teams, filling out the roster is the toughest chore. In today’s high school football landscape, having kids playing both ways is a norm and a lot of teams use this philosophy, including the Mapletown Maples and veteran coach George Messich.
“In our conference, every school is limited with their enrollment,” Messich said. “Every team goes through this, and almost all of the teams in our conference play both ways with their best players being on the field most of the time.
“It’s not a disadvantage in our conference because the majority of the teams have eight or nine kids playing both sides of the ball. Both teams and players are getting tired out on the field and it works itself out. You have to have the 11 best out there on the field every play.”
With quarterbacks playing cornerback, linebackers switching to running back and the linemen playing on both sides, it can be a long 48 minutes on a Friday night.
Some may think special teams could be a breather for players playing both sides, but Messich learned the hard way a season ago that you might want to put your 11 best out there during special teams action as well.
“Last year against Bentworth, we had a lot of kids playing both ways and I put a lot of younger, inexperienced kids on our kickoff coverage,” Messich said. “They were young and Bentworth returned their first two kickoffs for touchdowns against us. There are no breaks when it comes to special teams; your best kids have to be out there, and you have to condition yourself that way.”
Injuries can happen a lot, sometimes in practice, when kids are playing both ways and Messich knows all about that as he lost six starters early on last year and had to game plan differently.
“In practice, we split them into groups and do a lot of positioning drills with conditioning and working on the fundamentals,” Messich said. “We feel that each coach should have his position players well conditioned during camp. We had a lot freak injuries, both at practice and a couple of kids outside practice and the game last year. It was a freak year, but injuries are unavoidable.”
Another way you can offset playing kids both ways is recruiting and building the team’s depth. At the end of last year, the Maples had 17 players and now start camp with 35 kids, thanks in large part to the assistant coaches, said Messich.
“My assistant coaches have done a lot for this program this year,” Messich said. “They worked their butts off during the off-season, trying to recruit and get kids to come into camp. So far it has been a success for us to get this many kids and I tip my hat to our coaches and the kids stepping up and playing for us. A lot of hard work goes into it.”
Mapletown will try to make the playoffs, and put in a full 48-minutes effort every Friday night to succeed in a very competitive Tri-County South Conference in 2010.