Four teams came together on Crescent High’s football field seeking one thing: improvement.
Friday morning, Crescent hosted a football camp for surrounding high schools – the Perry Maroons, Pawnee Black Bears and Tonkawa Buccaneers.
Players practiced against each other, and each team frequently switched between offense and defense, all while rotating opponents.
“I think there were some pretty good football teams here and we got a lot of good work in, so it was just a chance to invite some teams over and get some teams better and work on some things,” Crescent coach J.L. Fisher said.
Between the four schools, there were about 200 players.
The Tigers, wearing black and white uniforms that contrasted sharply with the orange and red uniforms of their opposition, were balanced offensively. They passed the ball well in drills, a testament to the continued growth of quarterback Kade Varner.
“We’ve been traditionally a run-first, throw-second type of football team on offense,” Fisher said. “And, this year, I think we have the ability to, you know, spread it out a little bit more and throw the football if we need to.”
Varner, a junior who is approaching 6 foot, 3 inches in height, is a returning starter. He will take snaps at quarterback in the regular season, but he is not the only Tiger who could throw passes in the fall.
“We also split him out some, at receiver … I think we’ll throw him the football, too, and let him catch it and stuff like that,” Fisher said.
Varner is part of a large junior Tigers class, a group Fisher will be counting on.
“We have a really strong class of juniors,” he said. “I think we have, like, 21 juniors out. We got 52 out on the team this year. Which for us, being a small Class A school, to have 52 kids is, really, a very high number for us.”
Despite a potentially more balanced attack, the Tigers will not stray too far from running the ball, the foundation of their program. They want to uphold their reputation as a physical team.
“(Opponents) know Crescent as a running football team,” Fisher said. “We’re gonna play smash-mouth football, which we can still do. Some of our strength is our linemen. We’ve got some big linemen, we’ve got some good backs, good quarterback, but we can spread it out a little bit more this year and be a little more versatile.”