Yoe Football News

The Cameron Yoemen got a chance to show off their skills in front of fans for the first time on Saturday morning during the intrasquad scrimmage. Below is reaction from head coach Tommy Brashear following play.

This was your first time out in front of Yoe fans. How do you feel things went?

It went good. It was the second day in pads and we had a good week of practice. I think our kids may have been a little sluggish to begin with, but we picked it up a little bit at times. I felt like the defense played pretty well overall today. I think the o-line played well. We had some timing issues with quarterbacks and running backs and some of the snaps threw the timing off on some of our plays. There are a lot of things to work on and that is why we do this. We will watch film with the kids later and go over those corrections. We will praise them on the good things they do, but correct them on the things that they messed up on. I was happy with it overall.

What are you trying to accomplish the first week of practice?

The first few days we are going over the basics of our offense and our defense. We are in shirt and shorts trying to get acclimated to the heat, getting back in shape and running around. We do workouts throughout the summer, but it’s not the same as coming out here and doing a football practice.

We have a lot of returning starters and they have retained a lot, which I have been very pleased with. The first week we had really good attitudes by the kids and good leadership by encouraging each other when practice got hard. We ran gut quarters on Thursday and we do that three times a year during the two-a-day times. They went into that with the right attitude.

You have a few more weeks until the season opener. What do you want to see from your team up until that time?

We will set goals here in a few weeks as a varsity team, but our goal as coaches is to see improvement from one week to the next. We want to get better each and every practice, but from one week to another, we want to see improvement. If we are making a mistake, we want to see that corrected the next week out.

We have Lorena next Friday and they are always well-coached. Their kids are very aggressive and they get after it. That will give us a good idea of where we are at. After this intrasquad scrimmage, we can learn from our mistakes. We got it all on film and we will watch it and get a good grasp of where we are at right now. As you go along in the playoffs the competition gets tougher and tougher, so we have to continue to get better and better. That is our goal.

You have two scrimmages coming up. Winnings those are not necessarily the most important thing, correct?

I don’t go into scrimmages worrying about winning them. Would you like to - sure - I believe

that helps with the confidence of your kids and your team and all of that. But, that is not the main goal. The main goal is to go out there and work on what we do and get better at what we do. If we are making a mistake, we have to learn from it and get it corrected before we get into the real season. The scrimmages are just practices, but usually there is a little more intensity to them since you’re going up against somebody else. I like that about them.

I’m excited with the two scrimmages we have against Lorena on the road and Madisonville at home. They are both very good ball clubs and good programs.

Yoemen ranked first in third major poll

The final major football poll of the year was released by the Associated Press this week. The AP differs from all other polls as they combine teams from both division I and division II, despite those teams not competing against each other in district or the playoffs.

That did not have an impact on Cameron’s streak of number one rankings. The Yoemen come in ranked as the number one team in 3A with a total of 12 first places votes and 223 points overall.

The complete rankings: 1. Cameron Yoe (12) 223; 2. Brock (3) 184; 3. Gunter (4) 156; 4. Hallettsville (2) 136; 5. Lexington (2) 113; 6. Yoakum (1) 108; 7. Newton (1) 102; 8. East Bernard 89; 9. Wall 69; 10. Malakoff 62.
Others receiving votes: 11, Canadian 57. 12, Teague 15. 13, Rockdale 14. 14, Mineola 11. 14, Arp 11. 16, Jefferson 7. 17, Sonora 6. 18, New London West Rusk 4. 19, Franklin 2. 19, Big Sandy Harmony 2. 19, Woodville 2. 22, Crockett 1. 22, Pottsboro 1.

The Temple Wildcats were handed 4th in state in class 5A. La Vega (5th, 148) and China Spring (10th, 41) are both ranked in the 4A poll. Mart (3rd) and Bremond (4th) are two local teams included in the 2A rankings.