Practices buoyed by weather
8/17/2010
By
LARRY MORITZ Salina Journal
Bruce Graber received two pleasant surprises for his first practice as Sacred Heart head football coach.
One was the weather that greeted the Knights and all high school athletic teams on Monday, the first official day of practice for six fall sports in the state of Kansas.
It almost felt like football weather when Graber and the Knights took the practice field at 6:15 a.m., with the temperature in the low 60s.
“It was unbelievable,” Graber said. “It’s really a blessing that the heat broke.”
The other surprise came in the number of players who showed up for the first of 10 practices this week. Graber and his coaching staff had 48 players (freshman through senior) for the initial workout.
“We had a week of camp (earlier this summer) and had about 40 kids the first night, and probably between 32 and 38 the rest of the week,” Graber said. “When we had 48 kids at practice this morning, I was just blown away by that.
“We have a student population of about 150, so to get 48 boys out to play football, I’m real tickled with that.”
Monday marked the opening day of practice for participants in boys and girls cross country, girls golf, girls tennis, football, volleyball and boys soccer. Of the six sports, only volleyball is contested indoors, so there were many coaches and athletes welcoming the cooler temperatures.
“The drop in the temperature is going to be a blessing for us,” said Salina Central tennis coach Mike Goll. “The temperatures the past couple weeks have been amazing, but a lot of our kids have been out playing in that heat. They would have been ready for it.”
Goll returns five of the six Mustang players who qualified for state last year when Central finished second to St. Thomas Aquinas at the Class 5A state tournament. When preseason rankings are released next week, the Mustangs will likely be somewhere near the top.
“We return those five but we also have three or four girls that will push for that open spot and push some of the girls who qualified for state last year,” said Goll, whose team will have its first meet in 10 days. “Practices have been spirited and it’s good to have that competition in practice.
“Our numbers are down a little bit, but I expect 75 percent of the kids we do have were out hitting and working on their skills over the summer to get used to the weather. Usually with this group, we hit the ground running.”
Cross country teams also hit the ground running on Monday, seeing how it is the nature of the sport. Sacred Heart coach Brad Dix, who begins his 10th season with the Knights, was ready to alter his practice schedule if the 100-plus degree temperatures had stuck around another week.
“We practiced at 4 p.m.,” Dix said. “We had a contingency plan in place and we were prepared to go at 6 a.m. or 6 p.m. if there was a concern. Fortunately the weather was fine, we had a good first workout and hopefully I didn’t run anybody off.”
Both the Sacred Heart boys and girls placed among the top six teams at last year’s 2A state meet. Although many of his athletes are unable to focus on cross country throughout the summer, Dix said they still come back with expectations of another high finish at the end of the season.
And that’s where Dix wants their focus to remain — on the end of the season.
“You have your top 10 or 15 percent that have some goals they want to reach and hit the bricks over the summer,” Dix said. “But we have to remember that at a school this size, we have kids playing summer softball and baseball, or playing summer basketball and volleyball. We’re sharing kids with other sports and it changes our goals a little bit.
“With this bunch, we don’t expect to run our best race in the first meet. We want them to run their best in the last three. We did a time trial today, which gives us a starting point and we’ll go from there.”
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Reporter Larry Moritz can be reached at 822-1410, or by e-mail at [email protected]
