Teams from across the River Valley, including Paris and the host Charleston Tigers, joined three teams from Oklahoma at the Charleston football camp held at Alumni Field on June 5. Charleston will also host camps on June 12 and July 17 before fall practices open in August.
The warm weather was accentuated by the artificial surface at Charleston giving the players a chance to acclimate to the upcoming summer heat. Players practiced in helmets, shoulder pads and shorts with coaches blowing quick whistles to avoid possible injuries at the end of plays.
Teams rotated quickly in and out after every play with all teams having the opportunity to play a lot of snaps on both offense and defense. The camp was efficiently run by the Charleston staff, and each year the camp is well-attended by many schools. And once again, I would like to recognize and commend all of the coaches for conducting the camp in a safe manner, protecting the players as they get used to the rising temperatures going into the summer months of workouts.
At publication time for this story, both Paris and Charleston will have participated in the second camp that was held on Monday, June 12th. But the camp has also included such River Valley schools as Lamar, Ozark, Pottsville, and Danville. Oklahoma schools who participated were Poteau, Heavner, and Panama.
The camps are an important part of summer workouts, especially for young teams that have little playing experience on the varsity level. It is difficult to draw any conclusions about a team’s progress in the short padded sessions, but it is an important part of drilling of plays and sets that were installed in the spring, as well as improving conditioning leading into fall practice.
All Arkansas high school programs will observe the Arkansas Activities Association’s mandatory dead weeks period that this year will be June 25- July 8. No organized workouts or on-campus workout facilities will be available to high school athletes across the state during this time.
After the dead weeks break, most teams will return to organized workouts on July 10. Camps and workouts will continue in July, and preseason practice will begin in August for most teams.
Unofficially, “Zero Week” games will be played on August 25 (date has not yet been published on the AAA website.) Not all teams will open their seasons on Zero Week. Paris has played Zero Week games for the past several years, while Charleston, for example, has not scheduled their opening games until the following week when the Week One games officially open the season. Teams playing Zero Week will have a bye in their schedules, usually around Week Three before the start of the conference portion of their schedules.
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