Photo by Daniel Mohrmann
It’s hard to get a true measure of a performance without a scoreboard. But the Manitou Springs football team came off the field against their scrimmage with Buena Vista on Aug. 20 getting the sense that this fall will certainly feel a lot different than spring did.
It’s unrealistic to ask this group of Mustangs to perform to the level that the team did just a few short months ago, but after what they felt was a lackluster performance against the Demons, they know they have plenty of work to do before the season gets going for real this weekend.
“After that scrimmage, we were pretty down,” junior Tyler Maloney said.
“We didn’t do too great, but everything we saw on film after the game was just small mistakes that we can easily fix. We’re not too worried about it.”
For the Mustangs to have another solid year, players like Maloney and senior Ethan Boren will have to lead the charge. With Nathan Gentzel stepping in at quarterback and players such as Isaiah Thomas and Joah Armour graduated, the Mustangs won’t quite have a spread offense feel they were so successful with last season.
The offense will be a bit more creative in getting the ball into playmakers’ hands and giving them the needed space to make those plays.
Perhaps the greatest outcome of Friday’s scrimmage was letting the Mustangs figure out what was and was not working on the field so they can touch up those areas and keep improving week by week.
“I can already see through two practices this week that we’ve perfected a lot more things,” Maloney said. “We’ll look way better than we did in the scrimmage.”
The season was supposed to start next week for the Mustangs, but they picked up an Aug. 28 game against Rye when St. Mary’s shut down its season because of low participation numbers.
Instead of not playing this week and then playing nine straight games, the Mustangs now have a bye week for Sept. 17. They’ll have two non-league games after the bye and then jump into Tri-Peaks competition.