The Franklin freshman football team does more than what shows on the field. Behind the scenes, they practice important drills, conditioning, scrimmages, and study older football games to learn skills.

Every practice day is different. Mondays consist of offensive drills, Tuesday is defensive, Wednesday is a review of plays, and Friday is a day for studying up on the next team. They always want to be prepared for every single game, and that way they can win.

They start off with warm-ups every practice, and then go on to do what is scheduled for the particular day. Players and coaches feel that without warm-ups, they will not do practices, because of the safety issues.

“We do warm-ups to protect the players. We don’t want any pulled muscles on any of our players,” said freshman coach Steve Nickerson.

In practices, they must do many different drills, including those that just focus on improving football skills: catching, passing, tackling, etc. These tiring drills are important because they are the fundamentals for the team to play the game correctly. Without these drills, the games would be a mess, and both coach and players will just not accept that.

Conditioning is another important part of practice. Consisting of needed training for most all sports, the conditioning part includes basic running and over-the-summer weight lifting. The main concentration is focused on speed and agility.

“I think [conditioning] is good because it keeps people in shape,” said freshman Kevin Cecil.

Without conditioning, no matter how little or much they do, it plays a big factor when players are rushing for those last few yards to make a touchdown. Even though the football plays and drills are a factor in still exercising, the conditioning can help make the entire difference.

Scrimmages are another necessity in the football practices. Scrimmages give the players the ability to do the plays they’ve learned and put them into action on the field. Scrimmages also prove worthy because players can find their weak spots in games much easier, and work on those areas during the scrimmages rather than real games.

“They are fun. They help you learn what you need to improve on,” said freshman Connor Tinsley.

Last, but certainly not least, is the film study. Although this doesn’t increase the player’s physical abilities and strengths, it increases the understanding and knowledge of what the players must work on and learn for the following game. In film study, the team is able to learn how they played, and how to improve.

The team watches their previous games, and then watches other team’s games as well. They try and learn to how to fix up their big problems with the games. They point out the bad parts of the game, and make sure those are corrected.

“We focus on our weaknesses, and show how they should be done,” said Nickerson.