The crunching of shoulder pads and the pounding of cleats could be heard emanating from the St. Vincent High School football practice field on Monday night as the Indians continue to work to the first day of regular season practice.
That work began last week with the first day of their main camp and was sustained on Monday.
The Indians have a total of 20 contact days that coaches are able to meet with players. Coach Tim Schumer has already utilized many of them into “minicamps” to help install the offense and schemes the team hopes to run this fall.
According to Schumer, the camp is not so much an introduction as it is a continuation of what the team already knows.
“This camp is just building on that foundation,” Schumer said. “During this camp we get the pads out and put them through some live football, instead of running through the plays.”
Schumer likes what he has seen.
“I’ve been happy with the progress we’ve made so far,” Schumer said. “They’ve seemed to pick up right where they left off from last year.”
The Indians have rotated offensive and defensive days over the last week-and-a-half, but on Monday it was very much a defensive day where the players went through tip drills and turnover drills for much of the two hours.
“We want the guys to know what to do when they get a fumble or an interception,” Schumer said. “We also worked on some tackling, but defense is about knowing where to line up and what your assignment is on each play and doing their job. We threw a lot of different alignments at them so that they read their keys and are sound on what to do.”
On the offensive end, the Indians will have a new quarterback under center this season.
Schumer will look to Christian Schaaf to fill the void left by John Wibbenmeyer Schaaf played late in games last season on the varsity level, and was also the junior varsity quarterback in 2020.
Schumer said that Schaaf, a sophomore, just has to be himself out there.
“He has to step up into that role and be a leader on the field, take care of the ball and do what’s asked of him.” Schumer said. “He doesn’t have to do anything special. I want him to go out and do the job the best way he can.”
To help Schaaf out, Schumer will lean on Jacob Kapp, the Indians’ returning leading receiver, along with a stable of running backs in Jett Reitzel, Evan DeWilde, and Mason Light. That’s not to say the Indians will be running the ball on the ground a majority of the time however, Schumer wants to get the ball in his athletes’ hands as much as possible.
“We are moving them around a little bit to get them all on the field at the same time,” Schumer said. “They are some of the better athletes on the team and we want the defense to have to worry about them all.”
The Indians are coming off a 6-3 season after falling to Hayti 54-41 in the district championship game. The Indians program has been building under Schumer with back-to-back winning seasons.
“We just have to make sure we are doing the little things right,” Schumer said. “If everyone does their job and trusts that the guy next to them will do theirs that will lead to some wins, we hope.”
