On a hot, muggy Thursday morning, the Paris football program welcomed three schools, Booneville, Clarksville, and Lamar, to Eagles Stadium for a preseason football camp. Paris, the smallest school in the camp, was participating in their first preseason camp of the summer. The camp include the 4A Lamar Warriors and the Clarksville Panthers, and conference rival Booneville…all larger schools with great football traditions. It was a camp that would have the potential to make all of the participating schools better for the upcoming football season. And after the camp, new Paris head football coach Jeff Weaver was proud of his team’s progress and performance in the camp.
After the day’s activities that featured time periods of offense and defense for all schools against each other, Coach Weaver commented, “We were pleased with the work we put in. We got a lot of reps and everyone got work. We can’t simulate what we can get from going against other teams like this. The offenses we were seeing were all three a lot different than what we can run against ourselves every day. I thought the defense did a good job of playing base defense and competed well. We kept things very vanilla on offense and moved the ball pretty consistently. We also did a good job of protecting the football. We obviously had a few guys missing which is to be expected in June. The guys here got a lot of quality reps and the Eagles got better today.”
Of notables missing for the Eagles on Thursday were wide receiver Cooper Haley and running back Duke Walker. Both are expected to be in camp and fully available by August. In their absence, other players were able to get valuable reps to develop depth on both sides of the ball. The weather was hot and muggy, and all of the teams had the opportunity to increase their conditioning in the heat, as well as in the physical play of the camp that featured the players hitting and bringing players to the ground. The whistles were quick, and it was not quite full speed, full contact, but it was pretty close. From this reporter’s observation, no team appeared to suffer any significant injuries which is what all coaches want to see this close to the start of August practices.
The two-week mandatory “dead weeks” will begin this Sunday and will run through midnight on July 10. Teams will have the opportunity to rest, get away from football, and heal any nagging injuries that they may have experienced over the past few months since spring football.
Resident Press will be in Charleston on July 14 to cover the Tigers football camp at Alumni Field. Watch for the story on the Charleston camp on July 19 in Resident Press, along with photos from the camp on Facebook at Charleston Tigers Sports.
Photos from the Paris football camp on Thursday are now available to fans of all schools. The photos can be viewed and copied at no charge on Facebook at Paris Eagles Sports.
So, from all of us at Resident Press, we wish you all a happy “dead weeks” break and and a great Fourth of July! We will see you again in a few weeks in Charleston for coverage of the Tigers football camp!
