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MCHS football players back at it

Bruce Tippets

— More than 80 Moffat County High School football players hit the practice field Monday to start the Bulldogs’ 1999 season.

After already attending an early practice beginning at 6 a.m. the Bulldogs finished their first day of two-a-day practices in an evening session from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

“This morning we had 83 kids out for the team,” said second-year coach John Haddan. “We had three more kids show up for the second practice. We are running about 86 kids. Last year we started with 81 and we ended with 76. So the numbers are up.”



According to Haddan, the Bulldogs are pretty balanced with upperclassmen and underclassmen.

“We have roughly 18 seniors and about a dozen juniors,” said Haddan.



“We have 22 sophomores and the rest our freshman. We will go two-a-days all this week. We will have one practice on Saturday and two-a-days next Monday and Tuesday. That will be the end of two-a-days.”

Haddan said, players will work on the offensive side of the ball for the first part of the week.

“The first three days we will just do offensive work,” he said. “We feel if we concentrate on offense the first three days of practice, we will be miles ahead of where we were last year.”

The Bulldogs will have a scrimmage Saturday morning.

“We will do some pad work Thursday and Friday,” said Haddan. “Our first contact will be Saturday morning and the kids well really get after it then.”

The Bulldogs, who finished last season with an 4-7 record and lost to Evergreen in the first round of the playoffs, feel they have a better chance for an improved season this year.

“We are miles ahead of where we were last year,” said Haddan. “We added Ron Linsacum as the offensive coordinator. Ron has more experience coaching football than the rest of the staff combined. It looks like our staff will be really solid this year.”

The Bulldogs face Montrose in a scrimmage on the road at 7 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 28 and open the season at 1 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 4 in Fruita.

“We play two really tough teams in Fruita and Durango in the preseason schedule,” said Haddan. “It’s a lot nicer playing Durango (7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 17) and Jefferson (1 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 11) at home. Our farthest away game is Delta (7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 1) and so we have a favorable schedule this year.”

Linsacum, the newest member of the Bulldogs staff has been coaching football for several years.

“I have been coaching for over 15 years,” he said. “This year we are going to take a look at doing a sprint-out attack. With a no-huddle offense. We are going to put a lot of pressure on defense, because we are not very large we can use our quickness to our advantage. We can do that by running a no-huddle offense and that’s what we are looking at. It will be a different look to what people are used to in Moffat County.

“It’s very important for the kids to believe in the offense,” he added. “We need to have some success early on. If the kids feel good about the offense early on things will start to happen.”


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