Preston Crabtree throws to Isaiah Radcliff during a drill at North Union’s football camp inside the Wildcats’ new fieldhouse. The Cats are moving forward with a preseason despite the uncertainty of the coronavirus. (Journal-Tribune photo by Sam Dillon)
The rain came down at a steady clip over the fields at North Union High School on Wednesday.
Mother Nature, however, didn’t slow down the Wildcat football team.
The Cats took full advantage of their new field house by turning the dual basketball courts into a training facility to run drills.
“It’s our inaugural practice inside,” said head football coach Nick Hajjar with a smile on his face.
The Cat grid squad headed into camp this week with looming concerns whether a 2020 season will even be possible due to COVID-19.
Despite the uncertainty, Hajjar said his team is moving forward and came into camp in ‘better shape than expected.’
“That is a tribute to them understanding how important this season is,” Hajjar said. “This is week seven back from break and I think about after a month the guys started to get back into it with their legs.”
Hajjar believes the Wildcats have been able to get a leg up on other smaller schools, thanks to their new athletic facility.
“The luxury of having a new facility and the old weight room, we were probably able to get more strength and conditioning done then maybe a lot of other places,” he said. “We can run two groups at once.”
Now that the Wildcats are well-conditioned, Hajjar wanted to move into putting on helmets and working on plays.
North Union could have started its intra-squad training as early as July 8, but Hajjar said he wanted to keep the schedule as “normal as possible for the kids.
“This was the week that we intended, if there were no stipulations, to start our 10 days and wear helmets,” he said.
Hajjar is hoping to see the competition come out of his team. The Cats, who enter camp with more than 60 student-athletes, will start to define their roles on the team.
“We’ve got a lot of battles going on,” Hajjar said. “Guys aren’t going to win a job right now and they’ve got to wait until we get the pads on.
“Mentally, though, you can loss a job very quickly if you don’t know what is going on.”
To help keep the focus, the coach is leaning on his athletes’ wealth of experience. The Wildcats are returning more than 30 players who have taken snaps on Friday nights.
“I think part of the focus is we have a lot of older guys back who have played a lot of snaps in big games,” he said. “They have done a good job of leading up until this point.”
Hajjar is also using the current pandemic to his advantage.
“I think being cooped up for a while, they can hang their hat on this,” he said. “It is a place they can see their friends and do something they have in common. Everything is meshing and going in the right direction.”
The Wildcats’ current goal is coming out of camp and ready to go into practice on Saturday, Aug. 1.
“We’ve got to work through some of those kinks and new guys assuming new roles with higher expectations,” Hajjar said. “Everyday we hope to get a little bit better and I think we are on pace to do that.”