The Liberty County High School and Bradwell Institute football teams are wrapping up conditioning and preparing for camps and full practices later this summer.
Bradwell head coach Greg Hill said he plans to take his team to a Fellowship of Christian Athletes Football Camp being held July 16-19 at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro. He said they had some new faces for conditioning as a few kids moved into the area.
“The numbers are increasing,” Hill said. “We had a great number of guys here today, and we put some good work in. I commended them on it when I talked to the team. I told them they should give themselves a hand … they had the weekend off, but they came today and they came Monday … usually it tapers off, but it was evident that they didn’t spend the entire weekend watching cartoons. They all did something because they came ready to work, and things weren’t that bad.”
Hill said the camp at GSU will help him see who might lead the team as they look to fill the quarterback position.
“As of today, I am still trying to find a guy that can do it all,” he said. “We want a quarterback that is versatile … that can run and that can throw. To win the big games, you are definitely going to need to be able to throw and you want a guy that can run with the football when you run the option, so we are trying to find the guy that has all those characteristics. We will keep looking, but the ones we got … there is no doubt that we have confidence in the guys that have been competing in the spring, but we still want to find the best one. We want that guy to emerge and step forward.”
Meanwhile, Liberty County head coach Kirk Warner said he needs to see more of Jaalon Frazier and Michael Moore before he makes his determination on who will be his starting quarterback. Moore recently had his hand cast removed and will begin throwing soon. Frazier did well in the intersquad scrimmage and is being mentored by new quarterback coach Julian Stokes.
Until the new leader emerges, the Panthers will have to throw Richard LeCounte into the mix. Before having a stellar year on defense and special teams last year, LeCounte played quarterback at the junior-varsity level.
LeCounte was back at weight training Monday after spending the weekend in Baltimore, Maryland, at the Rivals 100 Five-Star Challenge, an invitation-only camp.
“He did well,” Warner said about LeCounte’s weekend performance. “On the first day, he was seven out of the top 10 performers. The second day, he ended up being in the top 20 out of 100 kids, so he did outstanding. One of the coaches that I know that was up there said he did extremely well, especially considering he is an upcoming sophomore. He more than held his own.”
Warner said his conditioning numbers have been steady at about 90 kids.
“That is more than we’ve averaged during the summers since I’ve been here,” he said. “We are missing a few younger guys and that is to be expected. They are not quite as acclimated to this type of work. But our older guys and our leaders are coming, and that’s the main thing.”