Friday, August 21, 2009
Giles football team may be leading contender
The Roanoke Times | File 2008
Jeff Williams is now in his second year as head coach of the Giles High School football team.
Ray Cox covers recreational, high school and college sports in the New River Valley. If you have information you’d like featured,
e-mail ray.cox@roanoke.com or call 381-1672
Ray Cox
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For the committed poker player, the sweetest dreams are of an inside straight.
The car dealer's reveries turn to customers with pockets brimful of cash who are desperately driven to drive.
When the Giles High School football coach shuts it down and prepares for the nightly session with the sandman, his fondest aspiration is to have some smash-'em-to-pebbles offensive lineman on the current roster.
Jeff Williams, second-year Spartans boss, is living the dream. The angels are singing and the soft clouds float by. Strike up the Spartans marching band. Nothing's raining on this celestial parade.
Up front on offensive and defensive lines stand Greg Ray and Justin Farmer, seniors both, 12-foot-7 measured end to end and a collective 580 pounds on the beefy hoof.
Without saying a word, all those two have to do is drop down in a three-point stance to say, "Don't worry boys. We'll handle this."
Through the administration of predecessor Steve Ragsdale and now alumnus and second-year head coach Williams, with four state championships and a caseload of district and regional trophies to the good, somewhere at the foundation of every great team has been a mash-'em-flat offensive lineman.
This year the Spartans have not one but a pair of muscle-laden aces up front. They'll make everybody else up front better, too, and the rest of them were good players to begin with.
Everything went well enough last year on the line of scrimmage that the single-wing offense produced the Three River District's leading rusher, 2009 incumbent Justin Gautier, and another trip to the Virginia High School League Group A Division 2 Region C playoffs.
That offensive crew ought to be even better. Throw in Matt Bane, Andrew Eppling, Travis Robertson and other veteran athletes into the attacking mix, and the Spartans look as if they'll be able to keep that pigskin on the move.
With the league looking as balanced as ever, Giles figures to be a leading contender again.
For the second-year head coach with a lifetime (minus some seasons playing at Virginia Tech and coaching at Narrows) in the program, Williams is looking forward to the coming campaign. The offense fires him up for reasons both obvious and sound. But that's not all. There's a new excitement about the defense, too.
"We're going to be a little more athletic than we were last year," Williams said. "Plus, we've got some guys who we can sub in there, give some guys some breaks. We won't have to have guys playing both sides of the ball all the time. Last year pretty much, Farmer and Ray played both side of the ball the whole game. This year, we can move some other guys in there, move 'em around a little bit, spell them a little bit."
The prospect of fresh fourth-quarter forces on the offensive line led by Liberty University-commitment Ray and college prospect Farmer, ought to prompt opposing defensive coordinators to arise screaming in the night.
Who wants to line up against a well-rested boulder-rolling-downhill single wing offense on the fourth quarter march for a winning touchdown or to murder the clock (and all enemy hope) with a late drive?
"That's the thing that really hurt us last year," Williams said. "We ended up the season with only 23 varsity players. There were games we just got worn down in the fourth quarter."
Now it's going to be the other guys who are worn down like the lead in an overworked pencil. Or so the plan goes.
There's another reason to project the continued availability of fresh workmen for Giles. Unlike the many programs who engage in the now wildly popular and all but unabashed offseason practices known as seven-on-seven competitions, the Spartans take June off.
"Kids need time to be kids," Williams said. "We don't want 'em in the weight room until after July 4."
Of course, seven-on-seven's are really passing game and coverage exercises more than anything else. Giles, in a good year, will throw no more than six or seven times a game anyway. It is helpful to be able to install a pass defense before true workouts start in August, though.
Doesn't matter to Williams.
"You've got four weeks of practice before you ever play your first game," he said. "If you can't get everything put in that amount of time anyway, then something's wrong."
Easy for him to say. Everywhere in the Giles school district, everybody playing football from the youngest sandlot league all the way up to the high school ball, is pretty much on the same offensive and defensive page. By now, single wing offense and knock-'em-flat defense are in a newborn's DNA.
There's usually a right smart number of big-boy genes rolling around the bloodlines of the local population, too.
