SPRING FOOTBALL: Teams wrap up spring seasons with jamborees
Published 9:43 am Tuesday, May 23, 2017
- Hazel Green’s Garret Gustafson carries the ball into the end zone to give the Trojans a 14-0 lead early in the first quarter over East Limestone. Hazel Green won the spring scrimmage 62-21 Friday at Cavnar Field in East Limestone.
Unlike SEC football “A-Day” games, which attract tens of thousands of fans for a glorified scrimmage, high school spring games tend to slip under the radar.
Most of this has to do with timing, falling during the final weeks of the state baseball, soccer and softball seasons. In the Athens-Limestone area, only four teams scrimmaged other teams, with most opting to hold intra-squad scrimmages for one reason or another.
Clements beat West Limestone 9-6, James Clemens beat Hartselle 37-6 and Hazel Green beat East Limestone 62-21. Other teams like Athens and Tanner held an intra-squad scrimmage to conclude their spring seasons last week.
High school football teams in Alabama are allowed a 10-day spring evaluation period, which most teams begin around the first week of August and conclude a week before school finishes for summer. Many coaches have to wait on players who participate in spring sports, which don’t finish until mid-May, depending on how far baseball and soccer teams advance in the playoffs.
These spring practices allow coaches to evaluate what players will be able to contribute for the upcoming season and adjust their plans accordingly.
“We’ve been here 10 years and it’s the same every year,” said West Limestone head coach Jordan Cantrell. “We lost 12 seniors, so you have to adjust your personnel accordingly. Really, it’s about finding what you need to be doing offensively, defensively going into the summer.”
Spring rules
The AHSAA stipulates that the spring evaluation have alternating days of full-speed contact practice, not to exceed a combined total of 120 minutes of full-speed contact per week. One scrimmage contest is allowed during the spring evaluation and counts as one of the 10 allowable days.
If a high school holds a separate practice period for its ninth grade, it must be held during the allotted spring practice period of the school where it’s being conducted. Spring practice for any other grade level must follow the same guideline.
The first day of fall practice in Alabama is Tuesday, August 1 for the 2017 season.
