Coaches Make Notes: They See Lots of Positives, and a Wart or Two

Junior wide receiver and running back Michael Torry catches a pass in the flat and turns it into some positive yardage.

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The Blue Jays and the Roneagles of McDonogh 35 donned their full battle gear for an all-out scrimmage against each other to herald the start of the 2016 football season on a windless, stifling Thursday afternoon at Tad Gormley Stadium.

The familiar crunch of plastic smashing into plastic was loud enough that it seemed to reverberate all the way to Carrollton and Banks. The acoustics of every tackle, every grunt, every hit on the field were significantly amplified up in the near-empty stands where some 300 Jesuit fans had spread out — the majority parents and grandparents of the players, although a couple of dozen Blue Jays were spotted in the student section — to cheer for the Blue & White.

Senior defensive back Evan Loria corrals this Roneagles receiver.

In a scrimmage, there is no score, per se. The outcome is not recorded for either team’s official won-loss record. But let Jesuit’s website record reflect that the Blue Jays won. The Jays tallied five touchdowns, four of them rushing, while the Roneagles crossed the goal line twice.

Head coach Mark Songy did not single out any one player with kudos. Instead, he doused the entire team, all 103 players, with a hose of well-deserved accolades.

“We ran the ball well in some spots,” he said as the Jays headed for three buses. “We threw the ball surprisingly well, maybe a little bit better than I thought we would. For the vast majority of the scrimmage, we played really good defense, really sound defense, and I’m excited about that. I think you win in this league with great defense and we have a chance to be really good on defense.”

Fortunately, the Blue Jays sustained no serious injuries. As Coach Songy put it: “We came out of it really healthy and we have two guys we’re getting back on Friday who were out for the scrimmage,” he said.

Coach Songy and his staff planned to scrutinize the video of the scrimmage and compare notes as part of the preparation for Jesuit’s next gridiron event. The Jays will bus it up the river to Boutte on Thursday, August 25, to play the Hahnville Tigers in their Hahnville Jamboree. Kickoff is at 7 p.m. at Hahnville High School.

In a post-scrimmage meeting on the field, Coach Songy congratulated the players and said he was really proud of them. But he also took a moment to gently chide them for playing flat at the start of the scrimmage.

“On the negative side, I thought we were flat and I’m not going to make any reasons or excuses for that,” he said. “We were flat and you can’t be flat and play football… We started late. We have a tendency around here to wait until something good happens to us. We either make something good happen and we start playing real well or somebody makes a mistake and then we start playing well. You can’t do that, not in this league under any circumstances. You have to come out and play at the top of your game, from play number one to play one-hundred. That’s the bottom line.”

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