The Friday night lights will have to wait. For now, it’s “Tuesday evening dusk.”
Jefferson High School is hosting a series of seven-on-seven passing league games against other schools on Tuesday nights at 6 p.m. as the Dragons bide their time over the summer.
“They get tired of going against their own people every day,” said Jefferson coach T. McFerrin, who’s entering his second season on the sidelines for the Dragons and 36th overall. “I think it’s fun for players to see how they stack up against someone else.”
The Dragons, who went 11-1 last year and won their second-straight region title, will host West Hall, East Hall and Madison County this month. Gainesville will be added to the mix next month.
These non-contact, pitch-and-catch sessions will run into July.
The Dragons, who are 22-2 over the last two seasons, will also travel to Flowery Branch High School in July for a seven-on-seven passing league camp.
Though it’s an extremely scaled-down version of the real thing, teams get 45 reps each night on both sides of the ball each Tuesday night, McFerrin notes.
The passing league schedule is just part of the defending Region 8-AA champions’ offseason regimen as they seek to retain their title.
Jefferson has weight training Mondays and Thursdays — lifting for about 50 minutes — and then turns to a running program and agility work. In fact, half an hour on Wednesday nights in July is devoted solely to agility with a multi-station set-up.
With Jefferson having just nine days of spring practice and missing several players to other sports, the summer is the time for players to catch-up and get re-acclimated to the system.
“We’re doing the very same things we’ll do in the fall,” McFerrin said.
Speaking of this fall, the Dragons will shoot for their third-consecutive region title and also try to defend a 20-game regular season winning streak.
But realignment made the region much tougher, McFerrin said, and the Dragons added non-region foes like North Hall to the schedule.
All of this should serve as motivation for the Dragons in the dog days of summer.
“They’d better be motivated,” McFerrin said. “Because the schedule is much harder and the region is much harder.”
