By TIM GUERCIO

The Natchez Democrat

VIDALIA — Vidalia High School Head Football Coach Dee Faircloth said he has a plan this spring for his squad.

Weightlifting: and to be more specific, the bench press.

“I believe in weights and the bench press,” Faircloth said.

Faircloth said he developed a weightlifting program 40 years ago through trial and error.

“We start them off with two sets of six reps on the bench,” Faircloth said. “We add weight as we go along till we get to what we call gut and super gut.”

The Vikings are coming off of a season that saw them go 9-4. They were an 8-seed out of 32 teams in the LHSAA 2AA playoffs.

“We won the first two games and then we ran into a buzz saw,” Faircloth said. “Many (Louisiana), the No. 1 seed, beat us pretty bad.”

Seniors lost from last season are three all-district receivers and district MVP quarterback Tristan Weatherly.

However, two running backs, Cam’ron Randall and Devin Green are coming back.

“We get a lot of our defense back,” Faircloth said. “We have the core line back and only need to find one more linebacker. Moose Musa is back and will play linebacker this year and that’s a big plus for us.”

Faircloth said he has no doubt about his tried and true system when it comes to weight training.

“I found this way back in the late ’70s,” Faircloth said. “We will lift four days a week till May 23. We work on arms one day, and we work on legs the next day.”

The 2019 Vikings squad will come back in June and work on conditioning and will be running plays without pads.

The Vikings will come back on the last week of July to practice in full pads.