Douglas High football players committed to conditioning

Not long ago, summertime for a high school football player meant lying on the beach, hanging out with friends and maybe participating in an occasional game of touch football.
Not anymore.
These days, it means bench presses, agility drills and pass patterns.
With only 10 days of official practice required before games start in the fall, nowadays summertime is when coaches build a team.
Halfway through his team's summer program, Douglas High School football coach Mike Rippee said this one has been a productive summer for the Tigers.
"It's going very well," Rippee said. "The kids are working hard and they have great attitudes."
Participation in offseason conditioning programs are voluntary, but Rippee said the Tigers have gotten great participation this summer. That was far from the case when he became a coach.
"This is my 23rd year, and when I started summer weight training in about 1985 I was happy if I had seven or eight kids lifting," Rippee said. "It's evolved to the point where we have around 55 kids just at the varsity level."
And unlike basketball or baseball players, offseason workouts for football can only encompass so much. Summer work is usually limited to lifting weights, lots of running and 7-on-7 passing drills that don't involve linemen.
"For football, you don't get to play games in the offseason," Rippee said. "It's not really football until you put on the pads. You've got lead into that, but that's the easy part because that's what attracts kids to football."
Contact drills
Putting on the pads will happen Aug. 13, the first day teams are allowed full-contact practices. Fall practice for football officially begins Aug. 9, with three days of non-contact drills.
At the end of their first full week of practice, the Tigers will participate in a scrimmage Aug. 18 against Galena, then open the season Aug. against Reed.
While most of the Washoe County schools participate in a 7-on-7 passing league and weightlifting competition, the Tigers work out on their own. Rippee said his summer program is designed to help players get stronger, faster and quicker, and being ready to work on football, not conditioning, when fall practice starts.
"I'm really big into agility, improving speed and quickness, and I don't want to start Aug. 9 to get kids in shape," he said.
The summer program can be tedious, although Rippee said the number of players involved and the enthusiasm they've shown demonstrates their eagerness to get better.
"That's one of the keys to our success," said senior Brock Peterson, a tailback and outside linebacker. "We're always the best conditioned team in the league."
Curtis Hartzell, a senior defensive end and offensive guard, said the Tigers have been doing more this offseason than in his previous years with the program. He said he already feels more prepared for the season than if he'd been working out on his own.
"Weightlifting helps a lot when you go against defensive linemen, and defensive linemen aren't small," Hartzell said. "And we need to run to stay in shape, especially if we're playing both sides of the ball, so we can be in shape to beat teams in the fourth quarter."
Offseason program
After a three-week spring football session before school ended, the Tigers began a six-week offseason program in late June, and will finish Aug. 2. During spring football they worked on their offensive and defensive schemes, but the summer work is all about conditioning.
"By the time we get to the first day (of fall practice), everyone, especially the younger kids moving up from JV, get an idea of what to expect at the varsity level."
While the summer is about improvement, Rippee said it's also another useful tool to evaluate players.
"I'm with them most of the year, so I have a pretty good idea about their commitment level, and as we do go through it we do evaluate how they're doing," Rippee said. "We learn a lot about their work habits."
Those work habits, Rippee believes, are the key to either success or failure in football.
"If you work hard, you get a lot out of the sport," he said. "You don't have to have great talent. That's not to say we don't have talent, but you don't have to have it to get a lot out of the sport."
Just as importantly, Rippee said it's crucial that the seniors-to-be take over leadership roles vacated by last year's seniors.
"You always lose great seniors, but it's really important for the new seniors to step up and be great leaders," Rippee said. "We've been lucky that five of the last six years we've had that, and those five years we had good teams."
Even after losing a host of talented seniors from last year's Sierra League championship team, Rippee said everything he's seen this offseason indicates the Tigers will have another good team this fall.
Douglas was 8-3 last season, 7-0 in the Sierra League. The Tigers lost to McQueen, 21-12, in the first round of the playoffs.
"We had some good players (last year), and I think we'll have some good ones this year," Rippee said. "When I first got here I didn't know how we were going to win a game. Hopefully, we're past that."