Chargers get back to sense of normalcy for spring practice

For the first time in his three seasons at Choctaw County, head football coach Jeff Roberts felt a real sense of normalcy in the spring with his Chargers’ program.

Roberts was hired in the middle of the spring back in 2019 and 2020 saw the entire period canceled for schools in the state of Mississippi due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. After the strange summer and fall work that the team and the staff had to go through this past season, it felt good again to get back to work and feel somewhat normal.

The baseball team had a Class 3A, Region 4 championship and a playoff berth this year which pushed things back a bit, but Roberts pretty much had his full compliment of players that were able to practice in May.

“I thought spring went pretty well considering we pushed it back because we had seven starters playing baseball,” Roberts said. “For that reason, I thought we had a pretty good spring. We got better in some key spots for the future. The spring is about finding those guys who are going to step up not just this year, but the year after. There were a few guys that stepped up and we had some players take the next step.”

The Chargers are coming off of a 7-4 season in 2020 in which they were just a game shy of winning back-to-back district titles. Noxubee County was the team’s only loss in district play and the

Tigers made it all the way to the state championship where they were defeated by Magee.

There were some veterans on that Charger team, but there were also many players that were getting playing time for the first time in their careers. The spring allowed Roberts and his staff to really hone in on the basics and fundamentals so the team will be primed in fall camp.

“We wanted to go back over the stuff where we needed to get better,” Roberts said. “We had to make sure the steps were right, the angles were correct, make sure we’re tackling and getting physical. There were some things we couldn’t get done in pads because every time that we started practicing, it started raining.”

With the spring complete, the focus now hinges on the team’s work in the weight room and on the field for conditioning. This season is the first time that the Chargers have been able to really get some 7-on-7 work against other teams in the summer and they’ve already been able to play Winona as well as go to Louisville to take on teams like Noxubee, Starkville, Lanier and Leake Central and Roberts has been impressed with his quarterback Connor Jewell in those outings.

The goal of the summer is to get stronger, but the team is going to put extra focus on agility. It’s an attribute that Roberts believes is something that many teams on their schedule don’t have in comparison to the Chargers.

“We go about an hour and a half every day with 40-45 minutes of weights and 40-45 minutes of the outdoor stuff,” Roberts said. “The outside stuff is all about getting quickness because that’s kind of how we’re built. We’re not always going to be the biggest, but we can be the quickest.”