Wake Forest Athletics
Ray's Way - Aug. 16
8/16/2000 12:00:00 AM | Football
Aug. 16, 2000
We started off the day bright and early (6:45 a.m. practice) and we wore tops and girdles -- that's basically full gear without the knee pads. The coaches wanted to give us a little break, but there's always contact involved with one of our practices, I guarantee that.
As always, we have a break before the afternoon practice, then we return to watch film of the morning practice.
This afternoon we had a scrimmage at Groves Stadium. Players, for the most part, enjoy the scrimages. It's a break from the routine and it's close to game situations. We pretty much go full-tilt.
As always, even in the scrimmages, we don't hit the quarterback. On one hand, it's good because you don't want your quarterback getting hurt, especially this early. But for a defensive player, sometimes it's frustrating. Every defensive player wants a shot at the quarterback.
I thought the scrimmage went OK. We played well at times and at others we didn't. Tyler Ashe (placekicker) was impressive, I thought. He kicked two field goals over 50 yards. The offensive line played very well, especially in goal line sitations. Tarence Williams (tailback) had a good day running the ball. He's a little scat back who is hard to tackle.
On defense we had our ups and downs. Football is a game of emotion and if we can play on that high all the time, we'll be OK.
The "one" offense went against "one" defense one series and on goaline situations. I felt the defense did OK, except in the goal line. We just put in the goal line defense and had not practiced it before. And we were missing some key people with injuries, like Nathan Boling (hamstring) and others. I'm not making excuses. We just need to be tougher on defense.
By the way, I know (senior linebacker) Nick Bender's dad reads this every night, so I wanted to say hello to him.
After meetings tonight the team watched a movie, "Next Friday." I have seen t before. I thought it was hilarious. We need stuff like that, I think. It's good to bring some humor because we're so serious most of the time concentrating on football.
The humor stops when that alarm clock goes off tomorrow, though. Practice at 6:45 a.m.
