Wadsworth Community Radio

wadstwinsWadsworth, High School Football time is here.

Starting on Tuesday July 12th, the Grizzlies will be participating in a series of 7-on-7 practices with a number of area high school teams.

Wadsworth High School football coach Justin Todd says the 7-on-7s “gives you the opportunity to evaluate players against live competition. Certainly you can see that in practices and camps. But in the 7-on-7s, we can get a kid on film and evaluate their technique against somebody else”.

The 7-on-7s are played in shirts and shorts. Players wear helmets, but no shoulder pads. Coach Todd says he likes the 7-on-7s “but I don’t like to do a lot of them. Some coaches do 5 or 6 of them. This year, I have three. Two of them are tournament style, at Mansfield Comprehensive (7/12 @ 1pm) and at Bucyrus (7/23 @ 10am). We also have a 7-on-7 against Copley and Hoban. (7/19 @ 10 am at home)

Coach Todd says the 7-on-7s gives the coaches a baseline concerning the players on the team.
“Competition is what its all about. It’s one thing to go against your buddy, but to go against someone who you don’t know and has a different skill set I think is really important”.

An early look at the Wadsworth Grizzlies for the 2016 season shows that Coach Todd will have some challenges ahead of him. “We’re going to have to rebuild the offense. We’ll have a brand new offensive line. Only a couple of guys saw spot time last year. At the wide receiver position, we didn’t see much on film because it was a philosophical thing. We didn’t see them catch a lot of balls or run a lot of routes”.

Todd has also looked at the other side of the ball. “Defensively, we were young last year. That’s a good thing because we can look at what they do well and build around them”.

Categories: Sports

Joe Jastrzemski

Joe has spent most of his professional life covering sports, from the pros to high school, both boys and girls. He is currently the PA voice of Cleveland State Sports, Ursuline College basketball and Highland High School Basketball.