Pigskin fun

COULEE CITY – Both Almira/Coulee-Hartline and Soap Lake wrapped up spring football at a jamboree in Coulee City on Friday, joined by football teams from Wellpinit, Curlew, Republic, Waterville-Mansfield and Wilbur-Creston-Keller.

“I love this spring format – there’s no pressure, we’re just playing football again,” Walsh said. “It’s fun. The kids are excited about today, and they did a good job. We had a good spring camp and we’re excited for the fall.”

Teams gathered for about three-and-a-half hours of football, alternating between offense and defense against different squads for three-hour-long sessions with breaks in between.

“For us, this is kind of our camp,” Walsh said. “We’re not going off to football camp next week or anything… A lot of our kids are going to basketball camp and wrestling camp next week, so this is kind of our camp situation. We try to get the most out of it that we can. For a lot of these small schools, this is it.”

Many of the 1B schools don’t go off to a team camp over the summer.

“This is a great jamboree, it’s fun,” Soap Lake Head Coach Garrett Devine said. “There’s not a lot of opportunities for camps for eight-man (football), so this is our camp.”

Now that spring practices have wrapped up, the biggest takeaway for players has been being able to shift into a football mindset, Walsh said.

“They get some experience,” Walsh said. “All our kids are two and three-sport athletes, so they go from one thing to the next. For us, it’s an opportunity to switch their brains to football mode earlier than August when we start. They get that, and a little bit of excitement builds for football in the fall.”

Devine shared a similar sentiment to Walsh.

“We’ve got a lot of young guys, so it’s their first time getting to be out hitting out and playing football against other high schoolers,” Devine said. “Just getting their feet wet and getting experience. The good thing, especially defensively, is them getting to see other stuff. There’s so may different ideas for how to run an eight-man offense.”

After the teams completed the three scrimmage sessions, a final session was held on the goal lines on each side of the field, where teams competed in a tournament-style competition on the goal line. Offenses got three attempts to try and score touchdowns, they the sides flipped.

“We played pretty well today, so hopefully that understanding of, hey, we’re going to be pretty good in the fall (carries on) and the confidence that goes with that,” Walsh said.

Ian Bivona may be reached at ibivona@columbiabasinherald.com.