Putnam County football ended its summer schedule last week with a padded camp at Morgan County.
The War Eagles are now starting to prepare for fall camp as the 2022-23 school year starts next week. However, over the next couple of days, they will be participating in the Georgia High School Association’s mandated acclimation period.
“We’ve got to do five days of acclimation, which means they put a limit on us,” PCHS head coach Shaun Pope said. “We do two hours of physical activity [per day].”
The War Eagles wrapped up summer workouts last week after competing in a padded camp at Morgan County. They also participated in a camp at Baldwin High School in June before GHSA’s required dead period during the first week of July.
According to Pope, summer workouts have been “beneficial” for Putnam County in terms of helping the War Eagles prepare for the upcoming season, which starts in August.
“We lost a great group of seniors this past year,” Pope added. “However, we have a lot of kids that played a lot last season who are returning. So, during the summer, we really focused on building some depth, especially on the line of scrimmage. That’s been our focus. Also, it will continue this week and into fall camp. We have focused on finding some depth on both of the offensive and defensive lines.”
Putnam County returns a lot of talent at the skill positions but lacks depth on both the offensive and defensive line. Losing Dre’lyn Lockhart, Christopher Haynes, Unique Reid and Michael Crumbley in the offseason to graduation hurt the War Eagles.
Regardless, Pope is confident that the returning players in the trenches can step up and replace those four individuals. He believes this year’s group can step up to the plate.
“There are some talented players returning, who can make an impact,” Pope said. “We’ve got Detravious [Tre] Smith. He’s playing both offensive tackle and defensive end,” Pope said. “He’s been a starter for us on both sides of the ball for us the past couple of years. We’re expecting big things out of him during his senior season.”
Putnam County also returns Mark Watkins, who played both offensive guard and middle linebacker last season as a freshman. Plus, the War Eagles bring back Seth Boyer (senior), Blake Tiller (sophomore), Landon James (sophomore) and Dylan Leggett (senior) to play a variety of positions in the trenches on both sides of the ball.
“We’re kind of ‘by-committee’ right now,” Pope said. “Those six guys will help us, but we’ve got some others. Zacoree Wallace, a rising junior, was a great player for us last year. He started for us at left guard and played a lot [of snaps] on the defensive line.”
PCHS will rotate a lot of players during the acclimation period in hopes of seeing who fits where. Others that will be used in the trenches include Isaac Pope, Tristan Lower, Tyler Dennis, Kameron Butler, Jacob Howard, Rhimiair Johnson and Jadon Parker.
“We feel like those guys [on the offensive line] are coming around as a group,” Pope said. “Defensively, we feel like there are some guys returning that are going to make a huge difference for us up front. Now, it’s all a matter of piecing it all together.”
The War Eagles will face Greene County on the road in a scrimmage on Friday, Aug. 12, at 7:30 p.m.