As Wimberley athletics put a bow on the 2021-2022 season last week, it was back up unofficially this week as the Texan football team hosted their state qualifying tournament for 7-on-7 football last Saturday.
Though the results were not what the Texans wanted, having the players out there and working together early in the season is an important thing for the coaches to watch, especially with a group of new faces.
“We have lots of things to work on, no doubt,” Head Football Coach and Athletic Director Doug Warren said. “First off it’s 7-on-7, so there are a lot of new faces out there. For me, I want to see how these kids compete, how they respond to adversity and who’s going to step up and be the leader. We try to be hands off with this for us, because that’s our philosophy. So we let the quarterbacks run the plays, the defenses call the defense and let them process that so they can grow.
“Do you want to go 0-3 in your own tournament? No,” Warren continued. “But there are a lot of new faces out there, and we did do some good things. But there are some things we have to get better at to be more competitive.”
While 7-on-7 isn’t entirely the basis of how a team will do in the fall, it helps coaches see who steps up in different situations without the guidance of the coaches.
“That, to me, is what means more to me than anything else,” Warren said. “It’s more than just the running of the routes, but it’s the team concept. How do we gel together? Who is going to step up as a leader? We had those guys in those spots for a very long time for the last couple of years, and those guys are gone. So it’s different and different for these kids. We’ll get better at that as we go on throughout the summer, and there will be a big improvement from this week before we start league play and then play in another tournament in a couple weeks. So there will be a big improvement from everybody.”
As expected for the Texans, it was the previous starters from the 2021 team that performed up to snuff as well as the quarterback play.
“I thought the two quarterbacks did a good job of moving the ball,” Warren said. “Both had their bright spots and had their bonehead decisions, which are going to happen. I thought Ryan Shaw and Tru Couch had good days, but then again those are two guys that played a lot of snaps last year. So that’s more of the experience showing out there and that is what’s expected of them.”
While the pass defense did take their lumps during the outing, Warren isn’t too worried about the performance knowing they will be better on top of missing seven key positions in the vaunted Code Red Defense.
“The way we play defense and what we hang our hat on in the fall is not what’s conducive in 7-on-7 football,” Warren said. “We just try and play our stuff, because we know when fall rolls around and real football starts, it’s a different story. We are not worried about it. Do we want to win and compete? Yes, we do, but we are not worried about this stuff because once again it is 7-on-7. It’s just an opportunity for the kids to really grow together as teammates more than anything else.”
The Texans will continue 7-on-7 throughout the summer competing in more tournaments in the hopes of qualifying for the 7-on-7 State Tournament in College Station come late June.
