Translating Will Hopefully Lead to Championships
Translation Will be Key for this Year’s Football Squad
Coach Drum will many times say how having competition will help bring the best out of players, especially when those students have been winning.
Last year both the JV and Freshman won their district crown and even the ‘Gold’ team was undefeated without a chance of defending against other district opponents.
Not only that, but those younger teams had lost several players to varsity as Canyon Lake was starting a Sophomore QB and Running Backs in Ben Fulton, Micah St. John, and Tanner Faris on the Hawk’s backfield.
Freshman Jacob Ruff moved up from the Freshman team and got action in the offensive backfield and as a linebacker this past year.
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Joseph Crisp, Sam Sheppard, Richard Rosas were all called up as Sophomores to help in the trenches. With, Sophomore, Jacob Foster, being a returning starter after playing his freshman season.
Parker Reno and Luke Justis played as sophomores on the defensive side last year by giving a good account of their talents and having valuable playing time.
Canyon Lake will be suiting up a small group of seniors that were district champs on the JV team two years ago. In having a small group, it will only give more emphasis to other players coming from those sub-varsity teams.
Coach Drum mentioned this might be another year of trying to form a ‘Gold’ Team in order to have as many Hawk players into game action and not sitting on the bench. Having this Gold team, allowed players to develop when many might be having a late growth spurt and buried on the bench with other squads.
The translation part of this article will be based on how these younger players will be able to translate those championships in the past to being on top of the heap as a Varsity group.
Canyon Lake has not finished better than a 4th place team these past few campaigns with just enough wins to eke a way into the playoffs.
Yes, there have been first round wins but that is when the train runs out of tracks to continue to their eventual destination.
Last year the tracks were cut short after losing to the eventual Champion in Waco La Vega in the first round of playoffs.
Many times focusing on offense as a casual fan will make for a frustrating year, as the defense can many times be the catalyst in ringing up enough victories for that second season in November.
Last year’s Junior Varsity yielded two touchdowns per game while averaging 23 points per game.
The Varsity’s defense had a major problem as Canyon Lake’s passing stats were near the bottom in yards given up and passing percentage from past Hawk teams.
How well CL’s defense can keep teams fighting for points will help in that overall picture of finishing a season with more wins than losses.
With a solid defense being accomplished, then CL might come from being a team where many of the players starting specializes on one side of the ball which would result in more rest and better results.
Learning how to translate will be important this season as many players will be attempting to catch up with the speed of the game as they graduate up to Varsity carrying all those district championship banners.
That Varsity Banner is much heavier and realizing that goal can happen by how well this Hawk team can translate.
Go Hawks!!