While the start of the season is several weeks away, a couple of local high school football teams have opened camp.
At La Jolla Country Day School, the Torreys, under head coach Jeff Hutzler, opened practice last Thursday. Some 60 players (24 varsity, 36 junior varsity) attended the first day.
“Our two-a-day practices have been outstanding, with the majority of the boys in excellent physical condition due to their tremendous dedication to our summer strength and conditioning program,” Hutzler said.
“The focus of our early season practices are to improve our fundamental football skills, to establish a strong team concept and to install Big Blue defensive and offensive systems for the 2007 season.
Hutzler added that competition for starting positions and playing time is also an essential element of the August workouts.
“Our JV and varsity team attended an excellent team camp at Occidental College in June,” Hutzler noted. “We took 56 boys to camp.”
The Torreys will take on Crawford in the CIF’s Kick-Off Classic at 5 p.m. on Aug. 25 at Patrick Henry High School.
LJCD finished last season with a record of 9-2.
At La Jolla High School, head coach Dave Ponsford and the Vikings began two-a-days on Monday. La Jolla finished at 4-8 a season ago.
“We feel that we have a pretty good group this year, but we still have to plug new varsity kids from the JV into our offense, defense and special teams,” Ponsford said.
According to Ponsford, another transition will be with the offense.
“Anthoney Hill ran our offense last year, but he left us to become the head coach at San Diego High School,” he said. “He is very qualified and will do a great job with the Caver program, but it does leave a void with our program. We have worked very hard from spring practice and summer passing league making some changes with our offense and will continue this during two-a-days.”
Longtime offensive line coach Matt Rosenberg will take over the play calling on offense, and new wide receiver coach Steve Groomes has helped add some passing game changes.
La Jolla has 49 kids in gear with the varsity as they start fall practice.
“I expect that a few might end up with the JV, so I would expect that we could have a squad of between 42 to 45 this year,” Ponsford said. “I don’t think that we will have a great drop-off, because many of these kids have really invested time during the off-season and summer. “Our coaching staff had noticed a subtle drop in weight room attendance and with our summer running program over the last few summers. So we challenged the kids to pick up the summer work in order to try and push the team deeper in the playoffs.
“The kids responded well, doubling the number of weight room days this summer, and we also saw a dramatic increase in athletes who finished our rigorous summer running program.”
Ponsford said he is very pleased with the overall effort given by most members of the team this summer.
La Jolla, which opens on Aug. 31 verus Santa Fe Christian, had a fair number of athletes attend camps at various universities around the country this summer.
At The Bishop’s School, head coach Mike David and the Knights return 15 starters from last year’s squad, which finished 7-5.
“Much of our practice is refining fundamentals,” David said. “We are also focusing on things that hurt us last year. We look much improved in our overall defense. Also, our pass protection is now a strength.”
David said the team did a tremendous job this summer in the weight room.
“I believe that this effort will no doubt help us with our difficult schedule. Our team strength has improved 100 percent,” he added.
Bishop’s travels the Pacific Ocean to start its season, opening Sept. 1 in Maui against Maui High School.