Summerton – At this time a year ago, Randall State was still a month away from being named as the football head coach at Scott’s Branch High School. So he basically had one month to get the Eagles ready for the 2022 season pretty much starting from scratch.
State, who led Marion to the AA state title game just a few years ago, doesn’t have to worry about that this season. He has a season under his belt and was able to just complete a spring practice.
That’s the good news. Here’s the bad news, but news that is part of the life of being a high school coach in any sport.
While he had a short amount of time to prepare Scott’s Branch last season, State quickly discovered he had three pretty good athletes in Randy Gibson, Tyler Kind and Ernie Calloway. The veteran head coach built his offense around the trio, and they performed well. The problem? All three were seniors.
“First off we wanted to try and replace Randy, Tyler and Calloway,” State replied when asked about the priorities in spring practice. “We’ve got a bunch of young guys trying to learn to fill in those spots as much as they can.”
Kind had 1,231 yards of total offense, rushing for 706 yards and passing for 487 yards to go with 87 receiving yards. He scored five touchdowns for the Eagles, who went 4-7 and lost to Baptist Hill 8-0 in the first round of the Class A state playoffs.
Gibson had 984 total yards, 342 rushing, 341 receiving and 301 passing. He scored five touchdowns. Callaway was the leading rusher with 596 yards and eight touchdowns on 75 carries.
State said he had between 30 and 40 kids consistently involved during spring practice.
“They came up and looked pretty good,” State said. “We've got the young guys in ninth and 10th grades out, and that’s going to be the meat of our team. We just got a great jump-start to push us on into the summer.
“We’re still young, but we do have some seasoned guys. We’ve got to get the young guys to learn the offense, the defense and to be successful individually.”
Senior Jordan Kind, Tyler’s brother, and sophomore Johnquell Jackson, were getting the snaps at quarterback in spring practice. Jackson was the starting quarterback for the junior varsity last season.
The Eagles do return three starters on the offensive line in Javary Watson, Najee Allen and Trevonte Adams. Each is a junior.
Defensively, State believes he has a good group to build around in linebacker Deshaun Blanding, a rising junior who had over 70 tackles, senior edge rusher Zion Thompson and senior linebacker Kaleb Rolle.
“Defense is all about desire and running to the football,” State said.
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