Ferriday coach calls for order on, off the football field

Published 12:05 am Thursday, July 9, 2015

Ferriday High School football player Ronald Williams Jr., center, throws out trash that was inside the school’s athletics facilities along with his teammates. The cleaning out of the facilities goes along with new head coach Dwight Woods’ desire to making everything within his program more clean and streamline. (Sam Gause / The Natchez Democrat)

Ferriday High School football player Ronald Williams Jr., center, throws out trash that was inside the school’s athletics facilities along with his teammates. The cleaning out of the facilities goes along with new head coach Dwight Woods’ desire to making everything within his program more clean and streamline. (Sam Gause / The Natchez Democrat)

FERRIDAY — Ferriday High School players were getting a workout in Tuesday morning, except instead of running routes and executing plays, they were cleaning out their locker room and reorganizing Ferriday’s athletic facilities.

If organization and structure is the key to wins for the Ferriday Trojans in 2015, new head coach Dwight Woods is laying a foundation for success. Woods cancelled conditioning Tuesday so his players could adjust the locker room in an orderly fashion. The way Woods sees it, organization is key both on and off the field.

“If you have everything in place the way it should be, then everything else happens easier,” Woods said. “The more you can manage and take control of a game, the fewer things these kids have to guess at. It makes it a whole lot easier for these kids to go out and perform when they know this is how it’s going to happen.”

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Doing it through chores around the school is one thing, but doing it on the field is another. To bring structure to his new offense, Woods is crunching down on the time it takes his team to get in and out of the huddle, in an effort to implement a fast-paced offense that he hopes will give the Trojans an advantage in 2015.

“I’ve shown (the players) some film of some of the other places that I’ve been, and I think they’ve recognized that if these kids can do it, then we certainly can do it,” Woods said. “I think we realize that we aren’t going to be a Rayville pace, running a play every eight or 10 seconds. But if we could get the addition of about 15 plays a game, I’ll be satisfied with that.”

Ronald Davis, a returning wide receiver and running back who tallied 632 receiving yards, 166 rushing yards and seven total touchdowns in 2014, said he likes the fast-paced offense, and he doesn’t suspect many teams will be able to match the Trojans’ speed.

“We’re mostly going to be passing the ball this year, more than we did years before,” Davis said. “The system is somewhat basic, so everybody is catching on pretty good. It’s not too hard for anybody to pick up.”

Ronald Williams, the Trojans’ returning quarterback, echoed Davis’ sentiments about the offense, stating there’s not much separating former coach Cleothis Cummings’ offense and Woods’.

“It’s really the same,” said Williams, who passed for 1,062 yards and seven touchdowns in 2014. “The plays he’s running are similar to our old plays. He changed the names of his plays, but that’s really the only thing that’s different.”

Woods said he’s simplified his offense to try and help his team jump the learning curve, just two months out from the start of the season. In theory, Woods said it’s worked, as he believes the kids are capable of competing in live action after roughly three weeks of learning his new offense.

“I think now if we were to go out and do a 7-on-7, we could play,” Woods said. “Now, would we be in regular season form? No, but we could actually get out and compete.”

Ferriday will compete in a 7-on-7 at Vidalia High School Tuesday.