Fort Mill establishing new schemes as football season nears
With their first game only three weeks away, the Fort Mill High football program officially opened the 2018 season with practice its first full practice Friday morning.
Under the guidance of new head coach Rob McNeely, Fort Mill is installing new schemes and players got their first taste last spring and in sessions over the summer.
“Our philosophy going into the spring with a new offense and a new defense was throwing as much at them as we could,” McNeely said. “Not trying to confuse them, but getting 90 percent of our offense and defense concepts in so we could spend the summer reviewing those things already learned.”
McNeely said they also worked on the fundamentals of different positions to fine tune players’ skills.
“Coming out of summer camp, we can go from review and refining to building on what they have already done,” McNeely said.
McNeely didn’t have an exact number of players who turned out for the first official practice of the season between the varsity, JV and ninth grade teams, but said he isn’t worried about head counts because some may drop away as they grind up to the first game intensifies.
“Only the strong survive,” he joked. “I have never been one to look at numbers. All we need is 11 at a time.”
One of the most notable competitions for Fort Mill will be at quarterback between Dylan Helms and last year’s starter, JT Marr. McNeely isn’t publicly ready to name a starter just yet.
“You want to build quality depth, but that is when you have to have position competition,” he said. “That is the whole thing. We have preliminary depth charts in place, but it is up to that starter to keep his job, it is up to the backups to push them. We don’t want any starters coming out here comfortable and any back-ups regulated to being a back-up.”
For the most part, Fort Mill will be practicing early in the mornings until school starts and will switch to afternoon practices at that point. However, they do have three afternoon varsity-only practices before that with the first one coming up Aug. 2.
“I have been impressed with the kids,” he said. “We are already working on week one.”
Notable dates coming up for Fort Mill is a 7 p.m. scrimmage at home against Indian Land Aug. 9. The Jackets first official game of the season is on the road at River Bluff Aug. 17. Fort Mill’s first home game will be Aug. 24 against Chester.