Photo Courtesy of MP Football Social Media
Last week, the Mid-Prairie Golden Hawk football program started preseason prep with their annual camp. Monday through Thursday, players from fifth grade through seniors met daily at the football practice field behind the indoor facility on the high school campus to take their first steps toward the 2024 season. Camp focused on daily instruction from the Mid-Prairie varsity coaching staff, led by head coach Daren Lambert and included technique of fundamentals, position specific drills, teamwork activities and skills competitions. Lambert joined the KCII Radio Coaches Corner this week to talk about the purpose of camp for his program and how it went for his team.
Lambert said, “This week we picked up with camp and had an opportunity to go to Williamsburg and scrimmage them and Spirit Lake. Two teams who have been very successful. We had some moments of success and some moments where we saw areas we need to improve. That’s exactly what you want at this point in the year. (Camp) is kind of tough because you have a lot of guys who have been through it all, so the review is quicker for them. Then you have a lot of guys that it’s brand new for. Talking to our coaching staff, comparing last year to this year, we are light-years ahead. At the beginning last year, we were installing a lot of new things. This year you can pick up the pace with some of the groups. It’s important to expose them to something new each day, especially on the offensive side of the ball. It’s tough without pads to go full force on defense. We cover concepts, plays, different ideas of how we do things. We really turn it on next week with full practice. This is introduction but also preparation. Going over fundamentals and making sure we are getting better each day. That’s something that we’ve done this week. We’ve had a good week and I’m please with where we are right now.”
More than 120 players participated in this year’s event between the youth and high school sessions. The ramp up continues Monday with the first official practice for 2024, leading to the Hawk’s first live action of the season, an August 23rd trip to West Liberty for their annual Gator Bowl scrimmage against the Comets, before their official season opener August 30th at Wilton.