The Longview High School football program returned to work last week and jumped at the opportunity to show off its progress at Lobo Stadium during its annual intrasquad scrimmage on Saturday morning.
The team spent most of the week in non-contact activities, but ended the stretch with some competition.
“I think the attention and conditioning has been good,” Longview athletic director and head football coach John King said of his team’s players so far. “The practice habits are good. They are a good bunch of kids. They’ve been together for a long time and they know what it takes to win.”
Some teams can’t handle a quick turnaround like that, but this is one of the years that the Longview Lobos prepared for. Longview’s coaching staff made the wise decision to give deserving young players opportunities to suit up and play in varsity games and environments over the past few seasons, and it’s starting to pay off.
“It’s an experienced football team compared to what we’ve had the last couple of years,” said King. “We’re further along right now than we were.”
“It’s going back to having an understanding of where our schemes are,” he added. “They look like they know what they’re doing. That helps.”
Considering how far Longview is in the season preparation process, it wasn’t a surprise that players from both sides of the ball made the most of their time on the field on Saturday.
“I thought the defense played well, we lined up formations well, we didn’t lose leverage, and we tackled well,” said King. “Offensively, we made some plays. [The unit] had some missed opportunities, but I thought the offensive line as a whole did pretty good in the run game and pass game. [Quarterback] Jordan [Allen] looked good. We didn’t run Taylor [Tatum] and [Alijah] AJ [Johnson] as much today. We spread it around a little bit, so Brandavion Steverson had a good scrimmage.”
Coming off an event like that, Longview is well-positioned for another productive week of practice before it battles its first opponents of the season over the next week and a half.
“Our focus is going to be on us,” King said of his program's approach for the week ahead. “We scrimmage on Thursday, but we gotta get work in on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. We’re going to lose a day, but having an older group may be the only time that you can survive it, like we do with our 15 returning starters and 40 lettermen.”
The schedule is starting to heat up, so there will also be time to prepare for upcoming opponents. That includes a meeting with Texas High during Thursday’s home scrimmage at Lobo Stadium, and the regular season opener against McKinney Boyd at McKinney ISD Stadium on Aug. 26.
“We play a lot of different looks throughout the early part of the season,” said King. “From the scrimmage with Texas High to McKinney Boyd being a totally different team, Marshall’s got a new coach, and Tyler Legacy’s got some new guys. We gotta be prepared for everything.”
