East Limestone football coach Jeff Pugh is heading into his fourth season with the Indians. With fall practice underway, The News Courier sat down and asked Pugh five questions about his team and the upcoming season. Here’s what the Indians’ coach had to say:



Q: Heading into last season, there was some doubt as to how well East Limestone would do in Class 5A. Your team responded by making the playoffs. Has that raised the expectations for this year?

PUGH: The expectations are the same as they were last year. We want to get into the playoffs. You never know what happens after that.



Q: What do you feel will be the strong point of the team this year?

PUGH: I feel like our strong point this time is going to be our defense. We’ve got several key people back off the defense that played well at times last year until we got tired. They really played hard, but those same things are going to come into play this year. We couldn’t rest them last year and right now it’s looking like we may not be able to rest them again, so it’s one of those deals where if it’s a hot, humid night it’s going be tough on us until we find some depth.



Q: You’re entering your fourth season as the Indians’ head coach. Is the program where you hoped it would be?

PUGH: Yes and no. We’re competing. We’ve got kids playing hard but as far as our overall being able to play what I had hoped — 11 people on offense and 11 people on defense by now — that hasn’t worked out. We’ve got good kids playing, and have several that probably should be playing but just don’t have the discipline and work ethic to play.



Q: You spend a lot of time during the season with former Indians coach Paul Hargrove. Does the first East Limestone coach ever give the current coach any advice? If so, what?

PUGH: He tells me just hang in there because it’s all together different than when he coached. He just can’t believe, and sits there in amazement sometimes, what we have to go through now. Back when he was coaching, kids played ball because they loved it. They wanted to play ball with their teammates and their friends. They had to work their tails off away from school, so when football came around, it was a joy for them to play. It’s not that way anymore. We have so many things as coaches that we have to go through that coach Paul sits here and laughs at and says, ‘Son, I’m so glad it’s you and it ain’t me.’ Just having him here makes me feel better just because I’ve got the got the guy that started it all here and that has a grandson coming up. He wants to be around and that tells me that we’re still doing some things right. If the program was in shambles and it was sorry here, he wouldn’t want to be hanging around. He has pride in this program.



Q: The AHSAA Central Board recently voted to extend the region play format through 2012. Are you region play, or would you rather return to the old area format that was used until the 2000 season?

PUGH: For us being a smaller school in 5A, we were really hoping for the area play, just because we would have more chances to play some of our county rivals. We would have had more chances to play some schools that depth-wise are about the same as we are, but everything didn’t work out the way we wanted it to. We’re still going to be improved over last year, but we thought we were going to be able to bridge that gap a little bit more by having players not play both ways as much, and maybe we won’t be able to, but maybe it’s coming in time.