PLYMOUTH – A loss is never a good thing but as the Rockies dropped an NLC contest to Mishawaka a week ago, there was some light at the end of a season-long tunnel.
“I saw on the positive side we became a team that looked like we were confident on offense,” said Plymouth head coach John Barron. “Besides the negative snaps, we were moving forward. We looked like we were having a little more fun on that side of the ball.”
“Defensively our back end is a concern, getting off blocks and running to the ball is a concern,” he said. “Some of this stuff you have to take with a grain of salt when you consider who you are playing that’s all they (Mishawaka) do is just pound the ball.”
“I’m proud of our kids that were in the ballgame,” said Barron. “I told them this week that hopefully, we won’t have to play them at a position that they aren’t naturally gifted to play at.”
It has been a long process for many teams in the area this season. Without a pre-season to become familiar with personnel and where they might be most effective, teams without an abundance of veteran players have struggled at times. Plymouth is no different.
“I’ve been saying this to our staff that last week felt like week one this week feels like week two,” said Barron. “This is the first week where we have been able to separate our team into an offense and a defense and not bounce kids around.”
From week one the defensive interior has been a bright spot but on the perimeter, it has been a process.
“We are giving some kids a chance to play at the back end of our defense,” said Barron. “We’ve made some personnel changes on defense because right now we have to score points. We have kids on defense like Daniel Bacon, (Isaac) Navejar, (Reggie) Vasquez who are kind of the stalwarts over there. They haven’t changed positions.”
“The only two way players that we have this week are Garcia, who never gets tired,” said Barron, “And (Michael) Sheely who we really don’t want to play on both sides of the ball but until somebody proves to me that they can be more physical then he is going to play a lot of snaps.”
It has also made practice a lot different. With the benefit of a preseason, the emphasis on fundamental things takes less and less practice time. Without it, those drills take up more practice time late into the campaign.
“We are still doing things like stations,” said Barron. “Just conditioning football stuff. We are still focusing on fundamentals. We are taking 15 minutes of every practice with fundamental drills. We aren’t skipping over things. We need to do that. We want them to get fundamentals on both sides of the ball.”
“Our focus is to get more physical on the defensive side of the ball and offensively to be more confident.”
Those things will be important this week if the Rockies want to break into the win column.
“We’ve played against some really, really good football teams and Wawasee is one of them,” said Barron. “I think that we have turned the corner so far as confidence. That’s the biggest thing when you are dealing with teenagers.”
“We’ve defined everybody’s role from the freshman to the seniors,” he said. “The one way and two-way guys. This is your role. We couldn’t do that week one because we hadn’t seen enough of them to know what that was going to be.”
“We had 44 kids at practice yesterday,” said Barron. “That’s 40 kids down from last year. We still have 17 kids on the injury list. It makes a big difference.”
The game plan for Plymouth will be a simple one.
“I just want to see us play with swagger, confidence that you are proud to be a football player, confident of your ability to play the game,” said Barron. “Our kids finally look like a football team. We are getting excited at the back end of this season. All our games are tough games but if we can stay healthy I really think we are starting to gel as a football team.”
Kickoff is 7 p.m. at Plymouth.
