By By BRIAN HAINES, Sports Writer
CHOCOWINITY — Three years removed from his previous stint as Southside football coach, DeWayne Kellum opened up camp this week and didn’t miss a beat as his team ran through drills like a well-oiled machine Wednesday on the team’s practice field.
Kellum, who coached the Seahawks from 1999-2006 and took them to two 1-A state title games before resigning, looked like he never left as he guided his players through their transition back to the wing-T offense.
“It feels good, but rusty. I’m scared I’m leaving something out, but it feels good,” Kellum said. “I’m trying to get everything back in shape. The players are learning what we are doing and a new system. They have actually looked pretty good, of course once we start hitting it’s a whole new ball game.”
For the past three seasons the Seahawks, who finished last season with a 4-8 record and a loss in the first round of the playoffs, ran somewhat of a spread-type offense under coach David Hines. With Kellum back in the saddle, the team must learn how to operate the double-wing offense. Kellum said so far his crew has been up to the task.
“They look good right now, not a whole lot of mistakes,” Kellum said. “I’ve been really pleased with their work ethic. … We just run 12 different plays from two different packages. Our jet sweep looked really good and that is usually the hardest play.”
Kellum said the game plan for the first week of practice is to get the players in good physical shape while teaching them the new playbook.
“What we are doing now is we are doing all of our conditioning and our fundamental drills, all of it, really getting after it,” Kellum said. “Then we stop, take a 15 minute break where we teach them a lot of plays. We are throwing a lot of stuff at them that way next week when we throw the pads on and start hitting we already got a pretty good log of plays. You really can’t teach technique until you can put your hands on each other.”
Until the pads come on, the biggest battle for the 65 athletes that came out to camp is against the sun. Kellum said he has been trying to keep his players as hydrated as possible.
“The sun got to us a little bit today, it’s the first time we really had the sun out but they worked through it,” Kellum said. “We started out a little sluggish but we have been taking a water break every 10 or 15 minutes and wetting them with a water hose. We always take a lot of water breaks. If they work hard for 10 or 15 minutes then I don’t mind giving them a water break to cool off. You get more out of them like that because you keep them fresh instead of trying to in 30-minute sessions, you just don’t get much out of that.”