County foes meet in summer scrimmage
Published 12:00 am Friday, July 1, 2016
LAGRANGE – It was a county showdown.
The Callaway Cavaliers and Troup Tigers will not be playing this season, but they still got the chance to share a football field this week.
With a new season creeping ever closer, Troup and Callaway continued their preparations by taking part in an 11-on-11 scrimmage on Tuesday.
The scrimmage was hosted by Troup High, and the head coaches for both schools said it was extremely beneficial.
“Coach (Tanner) Glisson and his staff did a great job of organizing the 11-on-11,” Callaway head coach Pete Wiggins said. “We got some really good reps offensive and defensively. It lets you see how far you’ve still got to go to get where you want to go, to get where you need to be. Still, it was a good day.”
Glisson, who is heading into his second season as Troup’s head coach, was looking forward to scrimmaging with a program that has developed a winning tradition.
With Wiggins at the helm, Callaway has been a consistent winner, and it went 10-2 last season while capturing a region championship and making it to the second round of the state playoffs.
“Pete has a fine football team,” Glisson said. “They’re already established. We’re trying to get where they are right now. It was good to go against these guys.”
Glisson said it was “a good day,” and he felt scrimmaging with Callaway was a positive.
“Both of those programs work well together,” Glisson said. “It was a good day of competition. Nobody got hurt, and we got some things accomplished. It seemed to work pretty good.”
While the teams spent plenty of time scrimmaging on Tuesday, there was more to it than that.
During the three hours the players were on the field, they scrimmaged, and they also participated in a number of other drills.
“We did some one-on-one drills, some tire competitions, we did some quickness drills, offensive line vs. defensive line,” Wiggins said. “It wasn’t just 11-on-11 format. There were parts to it where we were able to work in individual groups, and I thought it went really well.”
Callaway mostly participates in seven-on-seven camps during the summer, and Wiggins said the 11-on-11 format offered a nice change of pace.
“It was a good day,” Wiggins said. “I felt like we got some quality reps offensively and on the defensive side of the ball. I’m looking forward to doing more of these.”
As soon as the scrimmage ended, Glisson watched the film, and he was encouraged by what he saw.
“I just got done watching the film, and some of the things that we’re doing are pretty correct,” Glisson said about two hours after the scrimmage.
Troup will be back on the field for another 11-on-11 camp today, and Glisson said it will be a challenging physical test for his players.
“It’s good to make them push through,” Glisson said. “They’re sore in spots. You have to reach down inside.”
For Callaway, after Tuesday’s scrimmage the remainder of the week consisted solely of workouts at the school.
Next week, teams are prohibited from having organized team activities because of the Georgia High School Association-mandated dead week, so the players will get some time off.
After the dead week, the teams will get back to work in preparation for a season that begins on Aug. 19.
Callaway has a pair of team camps on tap in July.
“We’ll have the dead week next week, and when we get back, we’ll have Kennesaw State and Auburn lined up,” Wiggins said. “That’s what we’re looking at for the rest of the summer.”
Reach Kevin Eckleberry at (706) 884-7311 or on Twitter @lagrangesports