New coach, new attitude for ’Jackets

Posted: Wednesday, May 30, 2012 12:00 pm

By RANDY CAVIN
Press Sports
There has been a lot of doubt with the Greenfield football team the last three years, but that may change with new head coach Don Pitts.
Pitts wants his Yellow-jackets to ‘Believe While Others Doubt’ and has instilled that as the new motto for the ’Jackets.
Greenfield is 4-26 dating back to the 2009 season and has lost 11 consecutive games going back to the last game of the 2010 season.
Pitts has his work cut out for him, but he is up to the challenge that began two weeks ago when the Yellowjackets began their spring drills and finished up on Thursday with a scrimmage at Trinity Christian Academy.
“We have only been together for a short two weeks here and with me not being there we did not get a lot of time to prepare for this,” Pitts said. “But the time we did spend together I think we came out an executed some decent plays. We did not ever give up.”
Pitts might have only been working with the team for two weeks, but he has been doing his homework by watching film from the 2012 season. He was impressed with what he saw in the scrimmage and believes the team gave more effort than what he saw in film from last season.  
Last season, the ’Jackets went with freshman quarterback Miles Cavitt throughout the season, but in the scrimmage against TCA, Pitts used three quarterbacks. Pitts was pleased overall with what he saw from Cavitt, Jeffery Johnson and John David Ricketts, but he was especially pleased with Johnson.
“All three of them did well,” Pitts said. “I have been rolling them to get them all some experience, but Johnson stood out.”
One problem that Pitts is going to have to correct is the long snaps.
Six times during the scrimmage the center snapped the ball over the quarterback’s head while in the shotgun formation. But, on one occasion, the ball sailed over Johnson’s head and he went back, recovered it, rolled to his right, avoided some tacklers and found an open receiver for a 15-yard gain.
“We had some players that should have been here and one was our starting center,” Pitts said. “We are working on moving some men around and filling that spot. Some of them just have not done it.”
Pitts admits there is much work to be done to get the team ready for the season opener on August 24 against Gleason. One task he wants to accomplish is to get the offensive line playing more as a unit and to get their timing down.
“We have a lot of work to do to get those linemen going,” Pitts said. “They are not firing off the line right now. They have got to pick up the intensity.”
Pitts did not have his ’Jackets doing anything special on defense. He just used basic plays to get the feel of the game for his squad. But he was pleased with the way Jeremy Lannon played from the linebacker position.
“Lannon is one of our tougher kids and he played real good from his linebacker position,” Pitts said. “We just got on with the basic defense and not doing a lot. I feel like they put up a good fight the majority of the time.”
In the scrimmage, the defense gave up five scores to TCA before the offense was able to score on the final series of plays. The ’Jackets went 70 yards in four plays thanks to a 59-yard pass play that got the ball down to the TCA’s 17 yard line.
The ’Jackets will be young this upcoming football season, having lost 11 seniors to graduation and that experience is going to be hard to replace with only four seniors on this year’s team.
But the head coach thinks, with  proper conditioning, his young team will be an improvement over last season’s team.
Pitts will have the team working in the weight room beginning next week and after the dead period he will have his kids working four days a week. Published in The WCP 5.29.12

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