To quote the line made famous in the sport of horse racing, “And down the stretch they come!”
After a summer spent mostly working on themselves, the Greyhounds wrap up their final week of summer workouts this week, leading into next week’s GHSA acclimation period, a bridge ahead of the start of full-scale practice on July 28.
“I think they’re excited; they’re hungry to work hard and do things the right way,” Greyhounds head coach Justin Montgomery said. “That’s the thing that fires me up most, just seeing their hunger. If you’ve got hungry coaches and players, you can grow a lot.”
Teams are allowed to practice the first two days of next week in helmets, in pads the following two days, with more practice time being permitted with full pads allowed by week’s end.
“In July, you’re in season mode,” Montgomery said. “Once you get into acclamation, it’s like we tell the guys, ‘You’re mindset needs to be that we’re going to make a run and devote ourselves to this through the first week of December.’” This summer has been a bit different from previous years under Montgomery in his first year as head coach. Rather than a summer schedule peppered with offseason workouts alongside other teams, Jones County has mostly focused on itself, minus a bit of 7-on-7 play and a session against Brentwood last month.
“Everyone’s looking forward to it this time of year,” Montgomery said. “With the way we went about the summer, we didn’t really do a bunch of OTAs or padded camps. We just worked out and practiced against each other.”
That, however, is just how the Greyhounds envisioned it in a summer leading to an Aug. 8 preseason scrimmage at home against Mary Persons.
“I think our guys are itching to put the pads on, and that’s how I want them to be. When you take a good break from no pads, they get fired up to put the pads back on. By the time we get through these next (few) weeks, we’ll have them ready to hit somebody else.”
