COACH'S FORUM

Baldwin Indians

By COACH ANDY GIDDENS

BALDWIN, FL - Finally, after months of preparation, the football season is here. The Baldwin Football team has been getting ready for this season since January of this year. Through countless hours of lifting weights and running sprints for conditioning, the moment that everyone was waiting for arrived and what an arrival it was.

Our week one opponent was Arlington Country Day School. ACD is an opponent that beat us by 1 point in overtime last year, and many of us Indians have been waiting for this rematch. This year found us bigger, stronger, and faster than last year's team. That makes us more physical and more competitive, and it showed on Friday night.

On the first play of the game, Jimmy Giffin ran around the right end for 60 yards. Four plays later, quarterback Kentrall Mims scored the first touchdown of the season with a 9 yard run.

ACD would then take the ball and score on their first drive, mainly because our defense was playing overly aggressive. The good news for us is that after that first drive, we settled down and held them to under 100 yards of offense for the rest of the game. A tribute to defensive coordinator Steve Shields for a job well done. Defense even gets credit for one of our scores, as Philip Smith picked up fumble and returned it 35 yards for a touchdown.

Later in the game, Kentrall would add another option keep for a score, with other scores coming from Cody Ziegler and Tyrone Jones. After the final gun, the score ended up 35 to 8 Baldwin on top.

It was a good start to the season, but by no means are we ready to compete with the other teams on our schedule or are we ready to compete in district play. There are no easy weeks or easy wins for us. Waiting in the wings for us this week is a road trip to Mayo to face the Lafayette Hornets. This team is by far one of the best small school teams in the entire state with a combined regular season record of 29 wins and 1 loss over the last three years. Coach Joey Pearson does a great job preparing his kids to play week in and week out. Our work is cut out for us and we must be focused and have a great week of practice to even be able to compete against them. One thing for sure, we will give it our best and will put up one heck of a fight. Hope to see all our fans in Mayo on Friday night.

Go Indians!!!

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Bradford County Tornadoes

By COACH STEVE HOARD

This season we are experiencing the growing pains of a young inexperienced team and new coaching staff. Nothing has come easy at this point. We are working hard as a program and will get better. We are further behind as a team than I had hoped due to our evaluation of players and implementing new schemes. None of our assistant coaches were here for spring practice as all of  them are new to the program. Our job as coaches is to get the right players in the best positions on the field and to adapt our schemes to fit our player’s abilities. This will be a work in progress but it will happen.

I anticipate a tough season that will test our players and staff weekly. As the season progresses we will show improvement that our program can build on. There are no short cuts to becoming a championship program. We must out work our opponents and care for one another. The teams we play have a head start in the hard work department and aren’t going to feel sorry for us. We are going to embrace the challenge.

This week the Tornadoes have a tremendous challenge in trying to match up with a very strong and well coached football team in Baker County. The Wildcats are a hard nosed bunch who will be ready to play us. We respect their program and are trying to emulate some of the things Coach Johns has established. The rivalry has been a heated one over the years with a rich history.

There is not a lot of love between the two counties and a lot of pride is at stake. I am only sure of two things, the atmosphere will be electric and the intensity level should be off the chain. GO TORNADOES !

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Baker County Wildcats

By COACH BOBBY JOHNS

JUST WIN.....I GUESS THAT'S ALL THAT REALLY COUNTS!!

We did not play very good against Union County last week but it was good enough to win. We must play much better, especially on defense if we hope to have a chance to beat teams as good as we will face in weeks to come.

Give Coach Zow and Union alot of credit as they did a great job of controlling the clock and moving the ball against us. Luckily for us, we had some solid performances from our offensive line and backs and forced two interceptions for touchdowns. Our defense was not very good but did take advantage of both of Union's mistakes.

I was very impressed by the improvement Union showed in the last week and I know we were lucky to have been able to secure such a win. I was very proud of the effort we got from Greg Williams on offense and also Jarvis Simmons on defense. If we can continue to improve fundamentally and get our kids to play HARDER on defense, we could surprise some folks as the year goes on.

This week we must prepare for a solid Bradford team. I don't care what their record is or who beat them last week, this is Baker -vs- Bradford. That's all I need to say. They will play their guts out against us and we will have to play inspired football if we are going to get to 2-0. This is a huge week for us and we must get ready.

I would like to say thanks to everyone for continuing to pray for Milton as he continues to improve. WE LOVE YOU MILTON and we hope to see everyone Friday night. GO WILDCATS!!!