For Bethlehem Christian Academy football coach Don Garmon, it was simply nice to be on the field against an opposing team.
The BCA Knights took part in a jamboree type scrimmage Friday competing against Loganville Christian Academy and Crown Athletics.
“It’s tough for us to scrimmage in practice with our numbers,” Garmon said. “To be able to scrimmage benefited us more than anything. We also came out of Friday night healthy with only a couple of minor injuries.”
In breaking down the scrimmages, Garmon said there were positives on both sides of the football.
“We did some really good things,” the BCA coach said. “We were able to look at the film and see what adjustments need to be made. Overall though, it was a very good night for us.”
LCA is a AAA school with several seniors. Crown, which consists of home-schooled players, also had quality numbers.
“We did very well and it was great to go against someone else at full game speed,” Garmon said.
Knights offensive coordinator Lance Fendley agreed with Garmon that lining up against another opponent was extremely beneficial.
“We were able to see what we looked like against another 11 players” said Fendley, who is in his first season at BCA after coaching at Valdosta State University. “I wanted to see what we could do with our passing game as the offense has primarily been a Wing-T look.”
The Knights did have success with their screen passing package during Friday’s event.
“Our fast screen plays to the perimeter got us five and six yards every play,” Fendley said. “That was encouraging. We feel we can take advantage of that because it seems a lot of teams play their corners off the football seven or eight yards.”
With less than two weeks until the regular season opener against Augusta Prep, the BCA coaches will begin formulating specific plans on offense and defense for the Aug. 31 contest.
“We’ll be able to sit down and show the players the film from Friday and keep working on conditioning,” Fendley said. “We are ready to go back to work. You could tell Friday that we aren’t able to scrimmage a great deal in practice. We have some mechanical issues we have to fix. However, we certainly saw some things we can build off of. We do need to be more physical running the football and be more physical in our line play.”
Defensive coordinator Nick Pou sees much progress from a year ago at this time.
“I felt like we were miles ahead of where we were last year,” Pou said. “Our scheme calls are easier to pick up for the guys and we have done a better job having players in the right position to make plays. After the first two series, our guys really settled down on defense. LCA scored twice it seemed in the first minutes, but then would only score twice again the rest of the night.”
With still more than a week remaining until the opener, Pou knows there is still time to make improvements.
“With a few adjustments, we will be just fine on defense,” he said. “I was extremely impressed with some of our linebacker play, especially in the second half. When we have two bulls back there like (Matt) Masters and (P.J.) Klein it’s fun to let them loose and watch them make plays. I look forward to seeing that all year.”
