Blair Oaks in full preparation for season

WARDSVILLE, Mo. - You may not be able to hear it, but the clock is definitely ticking.

With the summer schedule a distant memory and the first week of official practice under its belt, the Blair Oaks football team can sense the beginning of the season.

"We're 13 days away from our first game," first-year head coach Terry Walker said Saturday, "and while we're certainly not where we need to be, hopefully the kids understand that this whole thing is a process. We're never really going to get to where we want to be, but we constantly need to be taking steps forward to make sure we continue to improve."

One of those steps came Saturday, as the Falcons took part in their Green and White Scrimmage at the Falcon Athletic Complex. After just starting practice Monday, the scrimmage played out the way you might expect, with both good and not-so-good plays.

"It was our first opportunity for the kids to be in full pads and go full-speed, start to finish, throughout the play," Walker said. "So I knew we would see some mistakes, and we certainly did.

"Some things you can assess in practice and other things you can't, so you need to see it in a game-type situation. We will evaluate the film and we'll go from there. We know we have a ton of work to do."

The controlled scrimmage featured officials and a working play clock and ran slightly more than two hours.

"It was great to have the officials out here today so we could see how we were doing game-clock management, along with abiding by the rules of the game," Walker said.

Before breaking down at the end of the scrimmage to focus on short-yardage, goal-line situations, the Green team came up with four scores while the White squad posted two. The teams were evenly divided, as opposed to having the first team go against the second team.

"The fact that we didn't have 1s running with 1s affected our timing a little bit on some plays, both offensively and defensively," Walker said. "That being said, we were trying to develop an environment that had the greatest competitive atmosphere.

"We thought it was necessary to do that, and we will continue to do that throughout practice, because if we're going to be good, we've got to be mentally tough, we've got to be physically tough, and we've got to be fundamentally sound. The only way to do that is to put them in an environment where you're challenging them in those areas."

The scrimmage was part of a busy day that included a parents' meeting, a clinic for the players' mothers, an "Amazing Race" type of team-building activity and a barbecue.

"I feel completely confident that the kids will be completely exhausted after this day," Walker said. "We have been going pretty hard and we will go really hard next week."

Blair Oaks will host a Jamboree at 6 p.m. Friday. The Falcons will be paired Helias and Centralia on one end of the field, while the other end will feature California, Moberly and Owensville. Each team will run 18 offensive and defensive plays against the other two schools on its end.