“One of the best things I enjoyed about it is the kids were able to compete with not just themselves, who they see during the whole offseason, but other teams,” said Fairborn assistant coach Jarrod Smith, who oversaw the drills inside the opulent Fairborn weight room. “So they got to see where they measure amongst teams that they might not play in the season and get a good glimpse of where they’re at.”
While the quarterbacks, running backs, receivers, defensive backs and linebackers compete outside on two fields, the linemen hit the two-man sled, did the bench press, cone drills and other workouts in front of representatives from several colleges, including Dayton, Defiance, Indiana State, Cincinnati and Kentucky.
Credit: DaytonDailyNews
“The other thing is it’s good to have one place where college coaches can look at multiple kids from multiple schools because that’s what it’s about,” Smith said. “To get these kids to love the game more, and then if there’s opportunities to further their education, then I’m all for it, not just as a teacher at Fairborn, as a coach a Fairborn, but we just owe it to the next generation kids for sure.”
One of the drills involved two players going against each other on a push sled, a device that somewhat resembled a waiter’s cart. Simulating a one-on-one block, it forced the competitive to get low to try to create leverage to get movement with their lower body.
Credit: Marcus Hartman
Credit: Marcus Hartman
“That’s relatively new,” Smith said. “A lot of coaches were asking me about it. One of them joked around, like, ‘I’m gonna take that with me. You cool with that?’” Smith said. “And I think that there’s some inquiry towards that now.
“I’ve used it very briefly, but from what I’ve seen, the kids seem to be able to translate that drill into how it applies to football.”
Schools to send teams to the Skyhawks’ facility included Badin, Beavercreek, Thurgood Marshall, Tri-Village, Lakota East, Meadowdale, Urbana, Wayne, Cincinnati Withrow, Kenton Ridge, Middletown, Springboro, Hamilton, Lebanon, Talawanda and Troy Christian.
That meant players from Division I, II, III, IV and VII were among those working out.
“There’s kids every year that I know that can play football, seeing their record, seeing them in the playoffs, and it’s great to see,” Smith said. “It’s great for them to see where some of the bigger divisions are, and where they rank amongst some of those schools. And it’s great for us to see where we rank amongst these schools.
“It’s always a competitive perspective that you have with it all. That’s how I took it anyway, and some of those kids were solid. I was very impressed with collectively every school that was represented here. There were guys who can play football on all of them.”
Kenton Ridge head coach Jon Daniels agreed.
Credit: Marcus Hartman
Credit: Marcus Hartman
With his team coming off a 7-4 season in Division IV, the Cougars got to see how they measure up against bigger squads, including Division I Springboro.
“We thought it was a great opportunity,” Daniels said. “Some of the speed we see out here is probably a little bit more superior to some of the speed we see in our conference. I mean, there’s times you get spurts of it, but the consistent speed across the board is faster out here.
“So getting our guys against that, and then being able to go up against that in front of college coaches, giving them a chance to come see our guys that want to go compete at the next level for them, this was a good spot to go do those things.”
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