While the National Football League, its players and its fans were sweating out the end of the four-month old lockout, Tiger football coach Mark Froehling and his 2011 squad were busy getting ready for the 2011 high school season.
Froehling, his coaching staff and 52 varsity hopefuls attended a three-day camp July 10-12 conducted by players and coaches at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion.
Froehling noted that although the usual number of players took part in the camp, several more had scheduling conflicts so it was hard to get a clear picture of what the fall season might look like.
"Hopefully in August we will have added some depth that we didn't have at the camp," he said.
The camp experience consisted of position-specific instruction by the South Dakota staff and players, a king-of-the-hill competition and three full-scale scrimmages.
"One of the teams we scrimmaged was Sioux Fall Lincoln who was the two-time South Dakota champion," Froehling said, "and another was Rapid City Central, the state's largest school."
Froehling said the thee-day camp met his goals, namely to evaluate his team's offensive and defensive schemes; to gauge individual athletes' readiness to play at the varsity level and to bring together a new group of players to begin the process of building a team.
"I thought our passing game looked good in the scrimmages," Froehling said, "and our defense looked fairly strong against both the pass and the run.
"We lacked depth and experience on the offensive line but that was because we lost five starters from last year's team...Our young sophomores performed well at several positions."
Fall practice begins Monday, August 15. The Tigers open the season Friday, Sept. 2, with a non-conference road contest at Section 1 rival Rochester Mayo.
