By Jeff Cali- The Ada News
NEWCASTLE — Ada’s first-ever football scrimmage under new head coach Brad O’Steen included some good, some bad at a little ugly.
The Cougars participated in the Newcastle Football Classic last Friday at Racer Stadium. The scrimmage consisted of a 45-minute rapid-fire session before Ada battled the host Racers in a 15-minute contest under game-like conditions.
The Ada defense allowed two Newcastle touchdowns and the Ada offense was kept out of the end zone during the live scrimmage portion.
“We did a lot of really good things, but obviously there are a lot of fundamental things and techniques we have to work on. But overall our freshmen, JV and our varsity did good things,” O’Steen told The Ada News Monday morning.
O’Steen said his squad botched at least two golden scoring opportunities that would have likely led to a tie with Newcastle.
“We dropped a couple of balls that had a chance to be touchdowns — including one in the end zone,” he said. “Those two drops probably make it 14-14. We didn’t execute and finish those.”
O’Steen said his players appeared sharper during the rapid-fire portion of the scrimmage than they were in the live-action against Newcastle. Both Ada and Newcastle watched Tecumseh and Bridge Creek scrimmage for about an hour before returning to the turf. For whatever reason, O’Steen said his Cougars weren’t as crisp after the delay.
“After we had sat an hour, we didn’t have the emotion we needed to have to go out and play in that type of environment. We had an emotional letdown. We have to be able to turn on the switch and turn it off. We turned it on the first part and then coming out for the live half it didn’t get turned on all the way,” he explained. “We didn’t finish that half like we wanted to, but that might have worked out good for us. It kind of brought us back to a little bit of reality and showed us we still have a lot to get better at.”
O’Steen was particularly proud of some of his young, more inexperienced players.
“I think our younger guys were a little wide-eyed starting out and after the first rotation they kind of opened up and started playing,” he said. “To me, we needed to have some success. We have a new system. We have a lot of guys out there that have never played varsity football. To go out there and have some success was good.”
Another thing the Ada coaching staff stressed to the Cougars following Friday night’s scrimmage was being more consistent.
“We weren’t consistent at all, especially during the live half. We would drop the ball, we would run the ball for a 1 or 2-yard gain. We didn’t read the RPO stuff correctly. We kept putting ourselves in a bad situation,” he said. “Then we’d pop a 20-yard run or a 10-yard run. We were just very inconsistent.”
Ada will have three days of practice before heading to the 2021 Noble Football Preview. It will be a very similar format with rapid-fire for varsity squads scheduled to begin at 6:40 p.m. Tecumseh will play Durant at 7:30 p.m. with the host Bears battling Ada at 8:30 p.m. The live scrimmages will include two 15-minutes halves with a running clock.
“The kids have to understand that everything negative that happened Friday night can be fixed if they take coaching and they’ll be disciplined and do their job properly,” O’Steen said. “The bright side of things is we had kids playing extremely hard.”
Read more at www.theadanews.com/sports
