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First taste of football
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Ken Peterson, 1-866-362-2167 Ext. 13866, sports@heraldargus.com


Photo: By Wendy Thoms
Michigan City's Adam Harmon looks for a hole around New Prairie's Elliot Lusk (left) and Ryan Balanow during Friday's scrimmage at Ames Field.

MICHIGAN CITY -- New Prairie coach Bart Curtis and Michigan City coach Craig Buzea came into Friday’s night’s football scrimmage at Ames Field hoping to get a quality assessment of how their teams stack up heading into next week’s season opener.

Both coaches came away from the scrimmage impressed with the work their teams have put in since fall camp started.

“I was pleasantly surprised in the manner in which we were able to move the ball,” Curtis said. “I wasn’t happy with how we finished drives. I thought we played well defensively, especially in the goal line areas and without showing a whole lot. The scrimmage is set up for teaching purposes. I’m going to dissect the film and find out what we need to do to get better to be where we want to be as a football team.”

The Cougars ran their usual option attack with a mixture of passes – short and long – that kept the Wolves on their toes.

“You can come in and run your bread and butter play after play or you can try and get better at some things that you’re going to need down the road,” Curtis said. “You’ve got to have some other things and we work on those other things.”

After giving up a 30-yard touchdown pass early in the scrimmage, New Prairie settled down and kept City at bay the rest of the night.

“I thought everybody flew to the ball,” Curtis said. “We had a little bit of an issue on the first drive covering the pass, but I think we got that solved. We can get a better pass rush, that’s something that we emphasized this year.

Curtis was pleased with the efforts of Jordan Colanese. Colanese filled in for Cody Williamson who missed the game because of strep throat.

“I was pleasantly surprised in many areas and cautiously optimistic still,” Curtis said. “We’re further ahead in things coming together than I did coming into this.

“We’ve thrown a lot of all phases of the game at these kids. I didn’t know how they would handle it and they’ve handled it very well.”

The Cougars may be without a player for several weeks as sophomore David Siddall was injured on the final play of the scrimmage and was helped off the field.

Buzea saw positives he can build on. The highlight of the evening for was an 87-yard fumble return by Austin Evans.

“I definitely not made to run that far,” Evans said. “It was somewhere around the 50. I didn’t hear any whistle so I just kept on running. I was trying to get into the end zone as quick as I can.”

Buzea said playing New Prairie gave his team a chance to see how it measures up against live competition.

“It’s good to play someone else and New Prairie plays a scheme that we’re not going to see all year on offense,” he said. “They ran six or seven plays, (and the kids) understood it. They made a great goal line stand. We played a lot of kids. We played 75 kids. We played a lot of kids that haven’t played football in three to four years. A lot of those kids made mistakes, but that’s what needed to see. We’ll go back and correct that stuff.”

Freshman Rodney Washington, Nathan Scully and Gage Farless each made very respectable showings at quarterback.

“Rodney Washington is going to be a guy we’re going to have to bring along slow,” Buzea said. “The thing is, can he help us somewhere else? He’s going to be a tremendous quarterback around here. We’re thinking we’re going to need a year of JV to get his feet wet. But he may be able to help us somewhere else as well. He’s a talent. I thought Nathan threw the ball exceptionally well. He’s been doing that all the time. Gage threw made some nice passes.”

Buzea’s biggest concern with his passing game was its struggle to protect the quarterback, something the veteran coach said his team is slowly starting to learn.

“There’s a lot of things that go into a good passing game,” he said. “One is quarterback, two are the receivers and three is the protection. And when you’re dealing with young kids like we are who are 280-300 pounds and they have to learn a protection they haven’t learned before, it’s going to take awhile.”

Buzea was encouraged by the running game, led by Adam Przybylinski and Adam Harmon.

[Max Main]

After reading this article, especially at the end, the qb is getting nervous