Larry Jewell

A 34 to 0 loser to give you last week, Counting 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1. We're talking with Pleasant Grove head football coach Doug Bluth. Coach, you've been here before as an assistant. Now you're the head coach. It must be quite a challenge now. It's a very big challenge. However, it's been to our advantage so far. I'm familiar with the community and with the available talent that we have. Clinton Grove, is that a fine tradition in football and especially against Dixie? Well, that's not necessarily so. I remember three years ago we went down and had a playoff game with Dixie for a state playoff at Cedar City at the college and that wasn't the case. Coach, let's talk about your team a little bit. First time out, a little bit disappointed, like Dixie losing to Spanish pork. What about your kids? We're a very young team. I don't mean as far as scholastically, but experience wise, we have a front offensive line who are seniors who have had almost no playing time at all in the past. We have had no JV program in the past or sophomore program to speak of and we feel that this experience has hurt us. But these young men have matured quite a bit. We hope, this week because they're going to have to if we're going to have a showing against Dixie. Offensively, defensively, let's see if you can get an evaluation after one game. Is it possible to have much of an evaluation after just one game? Well, we'd like to think so. We've made some key changes in our lineup this week. We've had a change of quarterback. We're putting. We're going with a mostly a junior backfield, a junior at the controls, and we hope that he'll mature for us and hopefully we'll have him for two full years. That's Barry Laggard, 150 pound junior. That's correct, 150 pound junior. And he's all fire. We hope he just doesn't get hurt. What about defensively? What do you like to do? Defensively? We're a multiple defense. We run basically from the 50, but we like to do a lot of stunning, a lot of shooting. Our secondary, our coverage has changed quite a bit depending upon the team that we face this week. We know that Cole is a very fine quarterback, a very fine sprint out quarterback, and we hope that we can contain him outside because if we don't contain Staley, we won't be able to control any phase of the game on offense. You mentioned you're going with a junior backfield. What are the particular strengths of your ball club offensively? Right now? I feel some of our strengths are we have exceptional quickness in the backfield. We don't have overall linear speed, but we have very good quickness in the option offense that we run. This quickness is to our advantage if we get the execution up front that we need. A little bit about Dixie going into this game. What do you look for out of Dixie? We mentioned about defensively trying to control Cole Staley. What about you, your offense against Dixie's defense? This is always a big challenge and I wish I could have an answer for you right now. I'll tell you more about that after the ballgame. We can count on Dixie being a very hard hitting team every time. We have not played them yet, but we have not suffered some casualty, serious and minor. We know that when we're in for 48 minutes against those front people of Dixie and the way that Coach Odette runs his defense that we're going to get hit. We hope that we just don't have any injuries and we can last a full 48 minutes. You're up here with most of Region 6, Dixie carbon, cedar City a little bit on the fringe. What about your evaluation of Region six this year? Where are the strengths? Well, I take a different point of view than most of the other coaches in the region. All of them have said continually this region is a very balanced region. This isn't true. There's some very strong and very inevitable powerhouses in this region, which was very obvious after last week's Washington. We feel that Region 6 is very competitive because first of all, we have no practice games. You line up game one and go through game nine and you have no margin of error. There's no time to warm up, no time to make a lot of drastic changes. You have to be ready to play on that very first game and carry through the season. And if injuries, barring injuries, you should be able to pull through with a marginal record. If you're an average ball club, you have to be an exceptional ball club to be able to beat some of the top people. What I feel in the region, who do you look to be? The power. I think as far as the power goes, if you're going to contend in this region, you have got to beat First American Fork, second of all, Temp View, third of all, Provo and Fourth Springville, in that order. This doesn't mean that Dixie is not encountered or that we're counting ourselves out, but these are the teams who have the most returning personnel from last year, as well as the. The physical skills and the talent this year, which from year to year rotates around the region. Coach Doug Blue, thank you for being with us and good luck to you this afternoon. Thank you. We're going to need luck, believe me. We're talking with Dixie High School head football coach Ray Odette. Coach, we just had a chance to talk with Coach Bluth, and I'm not going to cue you in on that interview, but I would like to find out your opinions. What about going into this football game? It was disappointing, to say the least, last week against Tempe, but that's a big ball club. That's true. That was a good team. There's no question about it. We were disappointed and, you know, we've had some tough practices this week, but, you know, it's just like playing down in St. George today. It's so hot up here anyway, but we're looking forward to it. I think we can. I think the kids will be ready for this one. Any positive things coming out of last week? Oh, yeah, we're executing much better and our blocking is being sustained better. And we felt good about our practices this week. First quarter last week against Pleasant Grove, you had an outstanding goal line standard a couple of times. Well, I hope that stays with us. We work quite a bit at it sometimes. You know, things happen awful fast down in that goal line when you only have that much to defend, you better move fast and react fast. And we were pleased with that. But, you know, there's other aspects of the game that we really tried to emphasize this week, like a couple of fumbles. Pleasant Grove has had an outstanding tradition here at football. You've met them before in postseason play and also in league play. It's starting to develop a little bit of a rivalry with Dixon, I think, so we can feel it right here, right now. You know, you're right. They are a good team. I expect very good execution out of this ball club today. What about offensively and defensively? What do you expect out of them? First of all, defensively. Well, defensively, I think he'll probably go with a five two, an odd man front. This is what we expect. This is what he did last week. And of course, offensively, we're looking for that Wishbone. I imagine he'll run that option offense right at us. Wishbone is tough to run, especially it seems to be at a high school level. Well, I've never seen this. Coach Booth, Coach, you know, last year they ran The Veer offense. But I understand he's a sincere advocate of the wishbone. So we're either going to see a Vera offense or the triple option, one of the two. What about Dixie? Defensively, what do you expect to have to do against Pleasant Grove besides preventing them scoring? We've got to shut off that option. We've got to shut off their dive back with their big fullback up the middle and make sure that when the quarterback does pitch that he's contained on that pitch, man, and that he cannot get outside. This is what we're keying for today. Offensively, what do you have to do against Pleasant Grove and what do you have to watch out for? We've got to move the ball on the ground. We've got to get our running game going today. And I think that's basically it right there. If we can move the ball on the ground, we'll be right in it. This may sound like kind of a strange question, but how important are the plays in the game as opposed to execution of those plays, the variety of plays, Is that more important or is the execution? And when did you stop beating your wife? Well, I've been told that if you can beat a team with a quarterback sneak, run it every, every time till they stop it. And this is kind of what we try to do, is sometimes you do, you know, it depends on the personnel you have, too, and they change things. But we feel if. This is why I say the running game is so important. If we can beat them or control the ball with our running game and the different ways that we show our dives and, you know, different techniques with our formations, this is what we'll stick with. If we can beat them with a few, why, we'll do it. Coach Ray, Odette, thank you for being with us, and good luck this afternoon. Thanks, Larry. Three. We thought we might try at halftime, giving you a chance to meet some of the football players for the Dixie Flyers. And we have Perrie Jensen with us. Perry, let's get the statistics out of the way. Height and weight. And who is your favorite girl? I'm 511 and weigh about 220 pounds. Who's your favorite girl? I'll hold off on that. Perry, you've been playing lion play. Do you enjoy that? Yeah, I enjoy it quite well. Like throwing blocks. Get a great satisfaction out of seeing guys run through my hole and stuff. This is not the first year you've played for the Flyers. Compare yourself this year, as opposed to last year. I've improved 100% since last year in what areas? Blocking to be able to sustain blocks, and a lot to do with his confidence. I heard a rumor that you've been working on the weights over the summer. Yeah. Try and keep in shape. How much physical strength is required along the line and how much leverage? Quite a bit. They work you pretty hard. You got to be in pretty good shape just to make it through practices and stuff. Do you enjoy going head to head with guys bigger than you? I know you run into them periodically. I do. It's satisfying to me to be able to move them out. It's kind of a personal challenge to me. What about last week's game against Envy? What was the feeling on the team after the game? Always pretty sad about it. We felt we could have played them as far as the line went. I think we really outplayed them there, but a few things we had to work out, and I think we've got them worked out for this game. Going into this game, what's the feeling along the line? I feel really good about it. We feel like we've improved things. We've got learned some new techniques and stuff, and we really feel good about it. People would like to know if, first of all, some of your interests and what you'd like to do after you leave Dixie High School. Do you have any goals set out yet? Not really. Possibly go to college at Dixie and maybe play a little more football for them for year two and then go on a mission. Any particular interest or favorite subjects that you'd like, care to divulge? Maybe structural steel, welding. Perry Jensen, thank you for being with us. I'll let you get back in and finish dressing now. Okay. Thank you. Talking with the quarterback of this Dixie Flyer team, Cole Staley. Cole, you come from quite an athletic family. Not only your parents and your brothers, but your uncles and about anybody in your family. You're right. Kip was quite a star at Dixie High in basketball, and so I have to work hard to keep right behind him in his shoes, I guess. Is it tough to play two sports in high school? Yes, it is, but I really enjoy it. I mean, you know, it keeps me busy, and it's a lot of hard work, but it's worth it. This past summer, I'm sure everyone's aware now that you and Kelly Graves had a great opportunity to go to Australia and play basketball. A little of your reaction? I'm curious. Well, it's an experience that I'll never forget. And, you know, we got a lot of good playing in along with meeting a Lot of real neat people down there. So, you know, I hope it'll help us for basketball this year. It really was a super trip. You went from basketball to playing basketball in the summer, now suddenly changing to football. What sort of physical changes do you have to make physically, muscular wise and also mentally going from basketball to football? Well, football is a much more aggressive sport. And, you know, I would say that football, they work you quite a bit harder. It's a lot more contact, I guess you could say you almost have to be in better shape. You know, weightlifting is one thing that really is required in football, you know, if you want to be a good player. So that's one big change from basketball. A lot of people wonder, how does a quarterback develop? When did you decide that you were going to play quarterback? When I was in eighth grade. We started in Little League my first year. I jumped right into that position and from then on decided that I might as well try and make it all the way. I always dreamed of being in high school, and here I am. So I got to make the best of it now. It must be quite a mental challenge also being quarterback. It definitely is. I call my own plays and, you know, trying to keep control of the players in the huddle and on the field, you know, it's quite a mental thing on you. Along with physically. What about comparing your football game this year as opposed to last year? What ways have you developed? Well, as a sophomore, I didn't get to play at all because of an injury, and last year I was quite slow producing, I guess, and this year I feel like I've improved quite a bit, especially in my passing. I didn't have too strong of an arm last year, and I've worked on quite a bit this year in preparation for this season. And that's one place where I've really tried to improve as a quarterback. Any goals beyond Dixie High School? Yes, if, you know, if I get enough, I'd like to get a scholarship and try and play some college ball, but I am planning on a mission and that might conflict, but, you know, whatever happens, I guess, will be the best for me. Cole Staley, thank you for being with us and good luck. Thank you very much. 3, 2, 1. We're talking with Dixie College head football coach Lee Bennett, coach, about ready to begin a new season. But the opponent you face has one game behind them already. Yes, they started a little bit earlier than we did, Larry. They brought their people in and they played Northern Arizona last week. Beat them 35, 19. That's Northern Arizona's JVs and that was at Flagstaff. We were able to get a skywind report from that game and it's going to be a good test for us that first time. What about your squad this year? You have some experience coming back? We have a little bit of experience in some positions. Of course, our team last year was predominantly sophomores, but got some good experience coming back at quarterback and Rick Adams, who backed up Ben Bubach last year, and he's showing good leadership and that's good experience there. Also at receiver we have Scott Blaine who started last year, and Mike Mountaineer and Doug Painter who played quite a bit at slot back, so we have some experience there. Running back we have Barry McKee and Alphonso Davis, who are back from last year and both played a little bit, but not many starters on that offense. We do have a couple of starters on defense, actually 3. Brad Pfeiffer with the defensive line, Kevin Criddle at linebacker and Sammy Gray at defensive back. Those three guys started last year. Sammy Gray was all conference and all region and certainly has a lot of leadership there. Other than that, we're going to be mostly young freshmen that are trying to learn and it'll be a great experience for them against Eastern. How about the recruiting year? You mentioned the freshman. Do you have some good ones? We felt like our recruiting went fairly well this year. It was maybe a lot of factors that influenced that, but we were able to pick up some outstanding receivers better, enabling us to throw the football and in other positions. We feel like we've got some fine players and it'll just be a matter to test them and see how soon they can rise to what they're going to have to do in order to play. Let's talk a little bit about individual sections of this team, the lines, offensive and defensive evaluation. Our offensive line is probably the youngest area of our team. We have one sophomore right now in that group, and that's Lane Workman, who backed up last year at a tackle spot. The rest of the places are freshmen and we do feel like we picked up a couple of pretty good people there, especially Rick Lawson out of Las Vegas, who's playing guard, an outstanding lineman, and we're expecting him to provide some good leadership at that spot. Defensive line Brad Pfeiffer, who started last year, we moved him to a nose guard. He looks pretty good at that spot. Lee Potts, backed up last year, played behind Bob Barrera and he's come along real well. Extremely tough on a double team. He's very hard to Double team. And that gives us some strength there when we put him on our strong side. And we picked up a player by the name of Bob Sanders out of Las Vegas who will be playing a lot on that defensive line and he could also play some offense. He's one of our bigger ballplayers at 63230. What about the linebacking crew you mentioned? Kevin Crittle is back. That's usually a strength for Dick Seidel, linebacker. Yes, and we look pretty sound inside. Kyle Peterson is also back on a hardship. He was injured last year and was granted a hardship and he'll be back. Kevin Crittle, who led it last year as a freshman, did an outstanding job. And on the outside. Now we've got to bring in some young kids and teach them. Brian Wick played some who will be back this year. On the outside linebacker. Glenn Harlocher out of Valley High School in Las Vegas, looks real good at a linebacker spot out there. And also Paige Bennett out of Bountiful. So we're hoping that those guys come along and and are able to do it on the outside. Sam Gray, outstanding last year, but you lost a lot at the other positions in the defensive back. How does it look? Well, we're going to be stronger there. This is a strong point of our team. Sam Gray, of course, is outstanding on that one corner. Fred Lacy sat out last year because of ineligibility. He's eligible playing the other corner. He looks real good. We picked up free safety Tom Rossi out of the University of Colorado, had a grade problem there, transferred here, and he's doing an outstanding job there. And Alfred Stookey, a strong safety, backed up Monte Green last year. And Alfred, the real hitter on our team and provides some excitement that way. And those four look real solid there. And Doug Smart, who played last year and backed up. We're looking at him a little bit at strong safety, too, and he gives us some depth there. That's going to be nice. We picked up a corner out of Las Vegas by the name of Ricky Hawkins, a younger brother of Isaac Hawkins who played here before. And Ricky is coming along fast. He's a little bit faster than Isaac was, not quite as big, but we expect him to do a good job, too. Kicking game. You're missing Gary. All right. Yes. And that hurts. We're concerned about our punting right now. We've been practicing for a week and had special kicking practices and it looks like Dave Beckstead, freshman quarterback, will probably end up doing our punting. We're not Going to be as good at that as we were last year. Extra points in field goal, we should be at least as good. We have Bill Sorenson back from last year who was a backup kicker and also Jim Heim out of Park City, a soccer style kicker that looks pretty good. Pretty good on field goals and extra points, not as good on kickoffs, doesn't kick it as deep as Nathan Reed did. So we may have to try to get it up high and get our coverage a little better. Two new coaches in the league this year, one at Ricks and one at ceu. How does the league look? Difficult to say. Because of that, Larry Ken Schmidt up at Ricks has had a good recruiting year as always and we've always felt like Rick's has had outstanding personnel. They have more walk ons than any other school because of being a church school and they have some outstanding players. I just hope we can play them and catch them before they can learn what's going on in college ball. But they're going to be a very formidable foe now at College of Eastern Utah. I just don't know. Jeff Jorgensen, who is assistant at Utah State is the coach there and I haven't run across any players that are going there in my recruiting. So that means they must have brought most of their players in from out of state and so it's really an unknown. I have no idea what they're going to be like. Snow College is always tough. Ricky Cross is back. Ricky Cross is back, was all conference tailback and he'll be better this year. Snow has more experience coming back than any of the schools, including us. They'll be the experienced team and they'll be tough to beat. Dave does such a fine job there coaching and we expect them to be our toughest opponent this year. Two questions. Can you repeat and will you repeat? Yes, we can. We have that capability. Whether we will or not. It's going to boil down to whether or not our kids execute those plays when we play those key teams in order to win. And I think we have the personnel that can win the conference. Being young, you run into things. A fumble here, a drop pass there, clipping penalty on a certain play, those kind of mistakes that end up beating you. And that's what you worry about with freshmen, where that experience comes in. You can teach many things, but you know those simple little mistakes can cost you ball game and that's where you worry about freshmen. So we'll just have to wait and see how they mature in those areas. Lee Bennell Thank You. Thanks, Larry. It'd be fun to have some natural rivalries once again. Yeah. As I mentioned before, coming back to the Valley and playing the local teams, that's exciting and it's fun. Coach Steve Downey, thank you for being with us and good luck tonight. Okay, thank you. We're talking with Dixie High School head football coach Ray Odette. Coach, big win to begin the season. That's kind of rare for a Dixie High team to win the first one. Well, yes, it is, but it was sure nice to win it and we feel pretty good about it. You almost had the heartbreaking loss. A couple of major penalties in the first half. It took away a couple of touchdowns. That's true. You know, we've got to play by the rules though. I guess if we break them, why we have to pay the price. But I thought the kids did a good job not giving up. And coming back after a couple of penalties really did kind of break our back. Russ Nielsen, outstanding performance last time, but you'll be missing him this time, right? He's not going to play tonight and he did do a good job for us both defensively and offensively. He ran very well and of course, you know, got the key pass there, but he's got a bad ankle, it's very sore. So I think it's best that he just sit out the rest of the week here and get him ready for next week. Any other injuries of significance? Mark Jennings, that started force against Pleasant Grove won't be playing tonight either. He's got two bad ankles. Your team showed a surprising amount of firepower. Mike Etchings could throw the ball last year, but he looks like he's improved a good 50% over last year. Well, he's senior and senior makes a big difference between that one year and he's got a confidence in himself and he's handling the offense much better and he does look stronger. Defense, extremely tough. You got the safety against Pleasant Grove and you kept him in control except for two drives. That's true. We hope we can keep scrapping like that tonight. These kids are pretty good sized ball players and some good sized running backs. Orem, first time Dixie and Orem have ever faced each other. But I understand that you have almost ties with the coach coaching his brother at Snow College, right? He coached Gary down, his older brother. When I was at Snow, it was an off call conference defensive end and Steve was at the college then, but he was playing basketball and baseball at the time. So I've known Steve a long time and Gary and his family. What do you expect out of Orhum? I expect a running attack, a very tough running attack again with some play action passes. But mainly I think they'll basically just play football and get right after us. And by that I mean just try to outpower us. They had a good running game against Basin last week for that victory. They sure did. And you know, they ground it out. They kept the ball, I think seven or eight minutes there in the last quarter to get the go ahead touchdown. And that's the mark of a good team when you can keep the ball that long. Significant changes in the lineup tonight, Emmy. Besides replacing Russell. Jenny? No, the only real significant change. Well, you know, the change will be Randy Morrison will go at guard force and Burke Staley will start at the other safety force. But other than that, we'll stay the same. Keaton up. I think we've got to be able to control the ball and keep the ball away from them. We feel that, you know, with their strength, they might be able to keep the ball away from us, but once we get the ball away, we hope we can control it. Coach Ray Odette, thank you for being with us and good luck tonight. Thanks. There. Counting. 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2,. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18. Counting. See, it does work. Counting. 1, 2,