By Ed Piper
On day 2 of Fall practice, Viking players went through a half hour of the video version of a "chalk talk" by Coach Tyler Roach to tweak offensive plays, then did "indy" (independent) drills in position groups, before embarking on an "11-vs.-11 best offense" set of soft-tackle drives--as the starting offense marched downfield, alternating quarterbacks Jackson Diehl and incoming sophomore Hudson "Huddy" Smith on separate drives toward the end zone.
The day's exercise, a solo three-hour session Tues., Aug. 1, comes on week one of two weeks plotted out on Roach's "Fall 2023 LJHS JV/Varsity Football Training Camp Schedule", emailed to each player and assistant coach, then broken down into each day's minute-by-minute, planned-out use of time in whole-group and individual-group blocks.
As an outsider, one can see why seniors and juniors (some sophomores) would be drawn to participate in the La Jolla football program: Roach runs a modern, spread, and up-tempo offense with multiple tweaks. Meanwhile, with six or seven assistants helping move the boat forward, players are treated to an organized (but not drill-sergeant) practice that trains them in specific blocking, defending, and offensive skills that can raise them up within the local football scene--and even get some thinking of playing beyond high school in college.
To a non-football person who never played youth or high school football, the technical language of "Mike's" on defense and "Oregon" and "Duck" names for offensive plays and their options is indecipherable, and would require study with a coach's breakdown between introductory concepts and more advanced ones.
Players each brought pen and paper to note anything they would want to carry away from the daily presentation about the offense. Linemen joined the group halfway through the half-hour talk by Roach, seated at his desk in the football facility on the northwestern corner, hands on a laptop pointing out formations projected on a screen, and reinforcing the teaching with videos from recent seasons of diagrammed plays.
An observer reflects on his own experience in other sports in high school, where in basketball varsity instruction was technical and advanced, but probably not to this level of detail. In contrast, by senior year, the baseball coach, who was also an assistant football coach, was probably burned out from coaching three sports during the year and merely indicated "Throw the balls out" and we played the best we could, mostly with the help of an on-fire assistant coach who was new to the staff and who would eventually move into head coaching in his sports. This was all elsewhere, not in San Diego County--Ventura County, to be exact.
Another era, without travel teams, walk-on coaches, or girls'/womens' sports (prior to Title IX in 1972-1973). The facilities and trainers (we didn't have a trainer at school--the coaches performed that function) were also much less.
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