Middle School Falcons football takes the field

WILLIAMS, Ariz. -Williams Middle School students headed back to school Aug. 3 and with the new school year comes a new football season. Head Coach Tad Wygal held the team's first practices the week of Aug. 1 amidst several afternoon storms during the late monsoon season.

"These are all good kids," Wygal said of the new team.

Wygal said the first weeks of practice will be focused on conditioning and evaluating the players.

"We want to see what kind of footwork they have, what kind of football knowledge," Wygal said. "We want to get an overall picture of each kid and where they might fit in on the team."

Wygal said he thinks the team will have a solid offensive and defensive line this year. He said there will be new running backs.

"We've got some shoes to fill," Wygal said. "We want to be competitive in every game. That's my goal. I believe we will be."

Wygal said he has about 19 players this year including nine new players. Most of the new players are seventh graders but Wygal said he has several transfer students too.

The middle school Falcons have nine games lined up so far for the season. Three of the games will be 8-man football games and the other six are 11-man.

"We were lucky last year," Wygal said. "We had three 8-man games right at the beginning so we could more easily transition to the 11- man schedule."

Wygal said this year's games are a mix of 8-man and 11-man. He said this makes it more difficult as the players have to learn different offensive and defensive plays for each type of game.

"There's a big difference in how you run things and it's a lot of work," Wygal said.

Wygal said he is hoping to be competitive and have a winning season, but he said his main goal is to prepare the players for high school football.

"We lost a great class of eigth graders last year," Wygal said. "They're a bunch of good players and our loss in the high school's gain."

"They're going to have a great JV team this year," Wygal said. "A good portion of those kids (this year's freshman class) are going to contribute and even compete on the varsity up there."

Wygal said he basically runs the same offense as the high school. He said each year he goes through the high school plays and picks and chooses which ones to introduce to the middle school players.

"That's just how I've done it every year," Wygal said. "I just try to mirror what the high school does so when they move up they know the lingo and know the plays to some degree. They're not completely shocked."

Wygal said many of the players are in good shape from playing soccer and baseball this summer. He is pleased with the players who stayed active throughout the summer.

"There's a couple kids that have Xbox thumb," he chuckled. "But this is the place where these kids have to want to be and I appreciate that they're out here."