Area high school football teams prep for openers

The high school football season is just now beginning its second week. The opening round of games is still a week off.

“We finished our last double (Monday),” second-year Central Valley coach Ryan Butner said. “(Tuesday) we started to get into our routine of what our everyday practices will be. We’re going to have our hands full with that first game against Coeur d’Alene and we have to be ready.”

There isn’t an area football coach who wouldn’t say the same thing about their season-opening game, however.

In his second season as head coach at CV, Butner is working through a trend that’s being seen throughout high school football.

“Our numbers are down quite a bit,” he said. “We’re looking at about 70 kids in grades 10 through 12 and another 40 or 45 at the ninth-grade level. I would love to be at more like 85 in the top three grades, but we’re okay.

“My fear is that we’re losing kids to a number of different reasons, and part of that is the way the game of football is being portrayed in the media. But beyond that, football is a tough sport to buy into. You need patience to play this game. You’re not going to be a starter and you probably won’t play right away, especially when you’re a freshman or a sophomore. Kids want to play right away.”

The coach said he’s happy with the depth his team is creating through the first week of practice, and he said he and his staff have installed more of its offensive and defensive playbook than in years past after the first week.

Butner said the way he coaches the game has evolved over his years as an assistant coach, and he feels it will take more work, on his part and by his assistant coaches, to reach down to the middle school programs and help inspire young players.

“My philosophy has changed since I started 15 years ago,” he said. “Some of that is my personality evolving, and some of it (is) things required at our state level. We only have two days of contact on a game week. We’d always done that in the past, but that’s a change. How we teach tackling is going on throughout the country. We need to make it a safer game for everybody.”

One of those changes has been the use of, well, a big tire-shaped donut to help teach youngsters how to tackle.

“Oh, that does a great job!” Butner said. “It teaches a kid how to shoulder tackle. You have to get your arm through the hole and that teaches you to lead with your shoulder. It’s a moving target, too, and it replaces some of those live tackling drills we used to do. You still need to get in some of that, but it’s less.”

Around the Greater Spokane League, teams are getting down to business.

Defending league champion Mt. Spokane, for example, is benefitting from the depth the Wildcats created by persevering through a series of injuries a year ago.

They return six offensive linemen who started at one point or another a year ago.

For the first time in a while, Mead enters the season with a set quarterback in Payton Loucks, who shared duties at the start of the season a year ago. Coach Benji Sonnichsen brought in a new defensive coordinator to help add some stopping power to a team that already boasted a high-powered offense.

Ferris endured a tumultuous offseason and enters the new year with a new head coach in Tom Yearout, who moves from the foot of the South Hill, where he was a successful head coach at Lewis and Clark, to the top of the hill to coach the Saxons.

Gonzaga Prep remains the team to beat, to the surprise of absolutely nobody.

University’s fortunes will rest on the broad shoulders of a large offensive line.

At East Valley, coach Adam Fisher got some great news this week when his adopted son, Rodrick, was unanimously granted another year of high school eligibility by District 7.

Before being adopted by Fisher and his family, Rodrick had been homeless at times and did not attend school during his sophomore year.

The younger Fisher, the state 100- and 200-meter champion last spring, committed to play wide receiver at Washington State when it first appeared his high school eligibility had been used up. He intends to sign a letter of intent to play for the Cougars on his 19th birthday, Dec. 22.