Bulldogs begin two-a-days

Red and Black game moved to Saturday

sd_sports@yahoo.com

SIKESTON -- For the first time in coach Kent Gibbs' tenure at the head of the Sikeston football program, the Bulldogs will be going to two-a-day practices.

After three years at the school, Gibbs said this was the first year where the schedule allowed the team to utilize the format on a regular basis.

"I don't know that we ever went away from two-a-days," he said. "We started school usually on a Wednesday, and it was the Wednesday of the first week of practice. We usually had teacher work days before that. So most of that was just a simple of not being able to.

"This year with school starting later and our teachers meetings being a little later we were able to have time to do that."

Scheduled to kick-off mandatory practice this coming Monday, the Bulldogs will focus on special teams and conditioning in the morning segment while preparing offensive and defensive schemes in the evening practice.

With Sikeston losing a good portion of their starters to graduation last season, Gibbs said the extra practice time should help give him a better understanding of whose going to fill those spots.

"We have a lot of positions that will be open and I expect that those positions will remain open for awhile," he said. "Whoever comes and practices the best and plays the hardest during that time will be the guys who get the most playing time.

"We'll probably be in a somewhat of a flux situation, a team in flux, for awhile until we figure everything out. We may be in to the season two or three games before we have things set in concrete."

Another change this year will be the Red and Black game being moved from Friday night to Saturday morning.

"We're having an overnight stay on Friday where we're going to keep the kids and have some leadership style things going on," Gibbs said of the change. "We usually always practice on a Saturday anyway because of the number of practices you have to have in before the first game."

"We felt like that would be a good time to have somewhat of a normal practice on Friday and come back and scrimmage Saturday morning and be finished. We're going to have a program at the end of that, have a parents meeting and be finished with it before the rodeo kicks in to gear.

"We just thought it might be a nice way to kind of kicking off football season."