With the first three days of football practice behind them, the Goose Creek Gators are ready to get down to business.
“We had great participation (the first three days in helmets), no missing in actions,” Gators defensive coordinator Chris Candor said. “Overall it was a good three days of teaching. We wanted to make sure we were where we were when we left spring practice.”
Goose Creek coach Chuck Reedy said he and the rest of the staff used the first three days to install all of the offense and defense.
“It’s the whole-part method,” said Reedy, whose team won nine games and a region title last season. “Now, we’ll come back and refine things.
“We’re ready to move to the next phase. We’ll approach that slowly. We’re not going to take them out there and beat them up for two hours or anything. We’ll scrimmage offense against defense for about 20 minutes in the morning and afternoon as well.”
It separates the men from the boys.
“You start to see which kids can play when you get to hitting and tackling, and blocking and taking on blocking,” Candor said. “You have to be able to get through the two-a-days to get to more of the fun stuff.”
On Friday, the Gators will stand across from another opponent for the first time this summer. They travel to North Augusta to meet the Yellow Jackets in a scrimmage game.
Last summer, North Augusta lit up the Gators for a number of big plays.
“North Augusta is wide open,” Candor said. “They’ve got a quarterback that is pretty good from what I remember. We gave up a bunch of big plays. We’d make five or six stops and then we’d give up a big play, which was our problem early in the year last year.”
“We got beat a time or two in all of our scrimmages,” Reedy said. “We were a lot younger on defense but now we’ve got some guys that have played a lot. I think we can match up real well with them.”
The Gators then meet Irmo Thursday, Aug. 13. Those Yellow Jackets are powered by one of the better running backs in the Southeast, senior Mustafa Greene. He rushed for 1,300 yards and 17 touchdowns last fall despite missing a handful of games with an injury. He rushed for over 1,800 yards as a sophomore.
“It will be a good test to see where we really are,” Candor said.
The Gators host the Berkeley County Jamboree Friday, Aug. 14 before playing Woodland in a scrimmage Aug. 18 and ending the preseason in Sertoma against Military Magnet Thursday, Aug. 20.
“We don’t want to get too much hype going. We just want to get out there and see what we do,” Candor said.
Candor’s unit hopes to be able to live up to its dominant billing. The Gators return eight starters.
The focal point on offense the rest of the preseason will be the battle at quarterback between sophomores Zack Lavery and Jaquan Marsh. Lavery throws it as well as any Gator has under Reedy and Marsh is in the mold of Goose Creek’s past option quarterbacks.
“They’re both going to get the opportunity to step up, to step forward and rise to the top,” Reedy said. “We’re going to give them equal opportunities in the scrimmages and jamborees.
“We may end up playing both of them.”