Tracy Press

 
Raiders, Cougars start season on the road

Marcus Lomas (center) runs the gauntlet as he goes through a running drill with the junior novice team at the Tracy Cougars’ practice Tuesday evening. Glenn Moore/Tracy Press

In the week before the Delta Youth Football League has its first games, the coaches of the two local teams enjoy nothing more than seeing young players get fired up.

“It’s like we feed off each others’ energy,” Clarence Gilbert, coach of the Tracy Cougars Junior Novice team, said Tuesday during practice at Williams Middle School. “The team is running on all cylinders. We have no quitters.”

The Cougars will travel to Stagg High School on Saturday to play the Stockton Bears in their first game of the season, and coaches said that after several weeks of running plays in practice and scrimmages, the players are ready to do it for real.

“We’re ready to start our real estate venture and take our first house,” Gilbert said.

The Tracy Raiders play their first game Saturday at Dublin High School against the Dublin Falcons.

At Tracy Ballpark, the Raiders’ coaches said they take pride in seeing how many of their players, many whom haven’t played football before, develop over the preseason.

“The thing I like the best is they’re coming together as a team and working together,” Raiders Varsity coach Vada Franklin said, adding that about 40 percent of his players are new to the game. Many of the other 60 percent have outgrown the positions they played while in the younger divisions or just want to try something new.

Tracy Raiders' Evan Hoyt (left) gets Eric Williams in his sights as he gets ready to lay on a hit during Tuesday's practice with the Junior Novice team. Glenn Moore/Tracy Press

The teams just came back from their jamborees, where they run plays against other teams scrimmage-style. Varsity teams had their jamborees Saturday, and junior varsity and novice teams scrimmaged the week before.

Jeff Telles, head coach for the Raiders Novice team, said the jamboree helped the different roles on the teams come into focus for the players, so the last week of practice was to make sure they stayed focused.

“We just need to do a review and make sure we’re crisp going into the first game,” he said.
Cougars Junior Varsity coach Marcus Thompson said that his team’s competitive spirit is building as the first game approaches.

“We have enough kids here, they’re not scared to hit, they’re not afraid of anything,” he said.

“The good thing is we have a lot of coaches who have been here for the past several years, so we’re able to bring a lot of confidence to these kids.”

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