Central puts the pads on

Published 9:00 am Wednesday, August 3, 2016

THOMASVILLE — August has arrived, and the season of pads hitting has arrived with it.

A delay due to heavy rain and lightning didn’t stop Thomas County Central football from getting their business done Tuesday, as they continued their first week of padded practice.

With the change of contact level, the coaches hope to be able to be able to get a better idea on how their players are progressing.

“We had a chance during the summer to do some half-padded practices,” Thomas County Central head coach Bill Shaver said. “It gave us some semi-live action but now you get to make the tackles. In all those camps you never took anybody to the ground. That’s a good thing to see here in this first week when we’re not really worried about preparing for anybody.”

The addition of padding meant the different units could do more comprehensive competitions. The practice featured a contest between the offense and defensive units in certain situations. The first team offense was able to beat the corresponding defense during most of the plays.

With the changes, the are some issues lingering from the summer practices that the Jackets can now begin to perfect.

“You can now finish the play,” Shaver said. “We haven’t been able to finish the play all summer. I think we were better today with it than yesterday. We’re just trying to prepare ourselves for the season. We’re trying to find what guys are going to play in what spots. That’s the biggest thing you can look at once you’ve got on the full pads.”

With the players now in full gear, the struggles for starting jobs are reaching their apex, but that doesn’t mean that those that are seemingly comfortable with their spot aren’t getting some work in.

“Every day you’ve got to come out and compete,” Shaver said. “There’s some guys that have started for two years and they’ve still got to compete every day. They may not be competing against somebody beating them, but against themselves to get better.