It is that time of year when the weather will start to get warmer and schedules get busier. Spring time is almost here!!! Baseball, golf, softball and track have all started their seasons so that means spring football is not far away. The team has been working very hard in the weight room in preparing for the upcoming season.

This past Friday we had a sign up meeting for all boys in next year's grades 7-12 to come see if they would be interested in football. There were over 100 boys in the room to show interest in the sport!!! Each of these young men was given a packet of information for the upcoming season.

There will be a parent meeting coming up soon to discuss some of the important issues for this season. It is very important that all parents make plans to attend. In the information packet was a flyer for this meeting. The same flyer is posted here on this website in the PARENT INFO section. 

Spring football will kick off in May. We are hosting Lexington for the spring game. It should be a lot of fun. More  

 
 
It has been some time since the last post. There have been many updates to the CHS football program. The 2009 season was a great one as the team finished with a 7-4 record. The seniors became the first group in school history to make the playoffs all four years of high school. Even though the playoff game with Winston County didn't go the way we had hoped, these seniors had a great career.

In the offseason, there was the issue of reclassification. We have been on the bubble of 2A and 3A the past two times we have reclassified. In 2005 we were 2A, in 2006 & 2007 we were 3A, then in 2008 & 2009 we were back to 2A, and as history would predict in 2010 & 2011 we will be 3A. This presents a whole new challenge for our team and new teams to compete with each season. Our new region is made up of Colbert County, Sheffield, Elkmont, Danville, West Morgan, TM Rogers, Lauderdale County, and Clements. We have played most of these teams in the past four seasons. We have also brought a couple of old foes back onto the schedule. We will still open with West Limestone, but have added Ardmore in the fifth week and Brooks tenth.

The Super Bowl is tonight and being that I am not a real fan of either team, I hope it ends in a tie!!! Seriously, it should be a great game and most people think it will be an offensive shootout, but neither team would be in this spot without a great defense.
 
 
Last week was sure a muddy mess over at Phil Campbell. However, we were able to come out with a win against a very young Bobcat team. This gave us our first win of the season and pulled us to even in the region standings. We had a great night of throwing the ball as Jamison Bridges threw for over 300 yards again last week. Brandon Sanderfer was the leading pass catcher with 9 catches for over 100 yards. I don't remember a sack in the game and our offensive line has done a great job the past two weeks of protecting the quarterback. This unit goes unnoticed many times and it is made up of John Mark Ham at center, Andy Stanford and Jacob Holt at tackles and James Billiter and Justin Kephart at the guard spots. They have done a great job in the past with the run and a small change to the pass they have had great success as well.

Our defensive unit showed improvement in the game as well. I think I counted five three and out drives for the Bobcats and there were several times they only allowed one first down. Our defense is improving each week and intensity and effort always get the job done on that side of the ball.

This week we have a huge challenge with a visit over to Tanner. They once again have a well coached and talented team. They have a deadly combination of quarterback and running back and a big offensive line. Their defense is very fast to the ball. We will have to contain their big plays and take care of the ball if we would like a chance to be in the game.

Thanks to the fans that drove the long trip to Phil Campbell to see us play!!! We need all of the Colt fans to show up Friday night over at Tanner to cheer our boys!!!
 
Season Week 3 09/10/2009
 
It does not seem as though it should be week three of the season!!! We have had a fast start to the school year and football season is flying by. In case you haven't heard we have started the season 0-2. We lost at West Limestone 28-12 and lost last week to Lexington 24-14. We are also 0-1 in the region. If you attended both games you noticed two different teams playing. Defensively against West we played as bad as any team I have ever coached. It was a poor effort tackling. West is greatly improved, but we did not tackle well at all against them. Offensively we were a strong run team against them. We rushed for 221 yards.  When week two rolled around if you attended that game, you noticed we played much more upbeat and the defense swarmed to the ball. We also threw the ball for several school records. We were 37-52-1 for 315 yards and a touchdown last week against Lexington. The completions, attempts and yards are all school records. However, we would have swapped a record for a win any day of the week. We only rushed five times for minus five yards.

One might ask what would prompt a coach to make such a radical change in only a week. In high school football, especially small schools, a coach has to do what he thinks gives his team the best chance to win the game. Last week, we were struck with the flu pretty hard. Therefore, we had some very young linemen that would not match up in a run blocking scheme with Lexington's size and strength. Pass protection however, was a lot easier. We have a good quarterback and good wide outs. So it just made sense to me to practice the pass and hope for the best. We did get some of our players back from the flu to play in the game.

Sickness, more than the injury bug, has really been a problem. I know that nationwide the flu is hard on everyone. In our case we have had 16 of our 39 players sick this week. Either flu, sinus infection or other sickness has invaded our team. Our players that have been playing less of a role have done a great job in stepping up and helping make our team stronger. We hope that will help us this week and down the road.

Phil Campbell will present a huge challenge for us this week. They are a younger team, but they have improved each week of the season. They have a new coach this year and have had to learn terminology and methods he has put into place. It will be their home opener and I expect them to be very excited about being in front of the home crowd. We must play with the same intensity we did last week on defense and score when we have the ball to even have a chance at winning. We hope to see all of you over at Phil Campbell this Friday!!!

 
UPDATE!!!! 08/09/2009
 

WE ARE BACK ONLINE!!! Finally after searching through many troubleshooting guides we are back on the internet. The home of Clements Football is back up and running. Sorry for the delay on the website, it was a technical problem between the site development area and godaddy.com. However, if you are reading this you know we are back.

Everyone wants to know how is practice going???? So far we have had some great work this fall. I could not be happier with our team at this point. However, we still have a long way to go to be the great team we hope to become.

Stay posted for updates all season!!

 
CLINIC TIME 03/29/2009
 

This past weekend was the very first Progressive Coaches Football Clinic at Athens State. You can check out their page at www.progressivecoaches.com . This was the idea of Bradley Kimbrough a student at ASU. He was wanting to help to provide a resource for guys that want to go into coaching that were at ASU and other surrounding schools. It was a great weekend. There were many great presenters. I was asked to speak on the topic of offensive line. I was honored to speak and it was great fun.

I thought the highlight of the clinic was in two presentations. First, Cody Gross head coach at Colbert County, spoke on the moral and ethical duties of coaches. He detailed HOW a coach should act and WHAT a coach should do for his players. Cody has been a friend of mine for a long time and I greatly respect who he is as a person and coach. I thought he had a great presentation of the duties of what coaching really is...helping teach young boys how to be men. When it is all over for us in coaching and playing ball, what really matters is what the boys learned from us as men teaching them. The wins and losses are nothing more than numbers. That is not to say that we all don't want to win, but it is NOT the most important thing. Secondly, Sam Graham defensive coordinator at Oxford HS, spoke on behalf of the FCA. He had a powerful message that ended with a great quote. "Hell is going to be as bad as Heaven is good". That statement is a very powerful one.

At times people wonder why coaches are so into attending clinics. Many coaches go for a weekend away from school and squander their school's money. They don't go to learn and want to just hang out and have a good time. I have always been under the impression of if I am going to be away from my family, I need to learn more about this great profession. Whether it is a play or a drill or a new idea for a team function, learning must take place. I keep these notes from the sessions on file and many times look back over them from year to year. I worked for Perry Swindall at Russellville and he would at times want to see the notes that we had taken at a clinic. He was the person that drove home the concept to me that "if I am going to pay for you to attend this clinic, you better learn something" . Our staff at Clements usually attends a couple of clinics each off season. Last year we attended the Alabama Football Coaches Association clinic in Montgomery and the Auburn Clinic. This year we will attend those two plus the Mississippi State Clinic. Usually staffs look for a concept of an offense or defense they would like to use and go to see that coach or staff. I have been to hundreds of clinics in the past fourteen years. I have been to LSU, Alabama, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Auburn, UNA, Frank Glazier, COOL, Nike COY, Football For Christ, AHSAA Summer Clinic, Middle Tennesee,Tony Franklin Football and many others. I have also met with coaches on the high school level from time to time to find out what they do and why they are doing it. Networking and learning are a must if you want to survive in the coaching business.

Only about a month until the start of spring football. T

 

 

 

 
 

This is the new website for Clements Football. It is easy to manage and we will be able to add many new things to the site faster. This is not all that is going to be new. We have some new maxes in the weight room!!! Our boys have been working very hard in the weight room to get stronger for the next season. We will be posting that information on this site very soon. Spring practice is just around the corner as well. We will begin the first week of May and finish up by playing a spring game at Lauderdale County on May 22.

 

Look around the new site and check back soon. We will be making many changes and additions to the site!!!