Viking In The Sky: Accountability Will Be a Must With 2024 Hopewell Vikings Football

HOPEWELL TOWNSHIP– The Hopewell Vikings are having another two-a-day practice today. The first one started at 3 PM and ran until a bit after 5 PM. Then after a two-hour break, in which the players are served a meal from the Boosters Club and rest in the locker room, the players from be back on the field later tonight from 7 PM until 9 PM.

OPENING THOUGHTS FROM MONDAY’S PRACTICE (August 12):

It remains to be seen how many games the Hopewell Vikings will win this upcoming football season but one there’s one thing that I can say for certain; the players on the team will be accountable.

Spend any amount of time at a Hopewell high school football practice and you will see very clearly certain things that the coaching staff demands of their players.

Being on time, giving 1000% effort, listening and then following coaching that they’re receiving, looking like a team when warming up, breaking the huddle, ending a practice session, etc.

All of those things that might have been deemed minor in the past are now major and if you aren’t doing these things, every single drill or snap, you will pay the consequence in terms of running.

Let me tell you as an observer at practice, it’s even tiring to watch. Unless you’re a gluten for punishment, you’re not going to be repeating those mistakes more than once or twice.

Example: 5 players weren’t on the field in uniform and ready to practice at 3 PM, therefore, before they joined the team, those players did a bunch of up-and-downs, bear crawls and push-ups.

PRACTICE NOTES:

-Fifty players were on the field today, no one appeared to be missing practice due to injury.

-I was early to practice (didn’t want to have Coach Mottes have me doing any bear crawls or push-ups, LOL). Just something that I noticed, one of the first players on the field was freshman cornerback/wide receiver Tre Cameron. No. 18 has been impressive and despite his youth, Cameron will have a prominent role on the 2024 team. The kid is a player and will be fun to watch his development over the next 4 seasons.

-The opening of practice started with tackling drills in which the team broke off into 4 separate stations with various assistant coaches.

-Following that, the defensive backs and linebackers broke off into stations, as did the defensive ends and defensive tackles.

-The team then got together and worked on defensive team drills as the Coach Mottes and his staff got the players ready for their opponent this Saturday, Ellwood City. Despite this just being a scrimmage, the Hopewell staff treated this like a normal game week and let the players know and feel what a normal Monday will be like. For the next 30+ minutes, they walked the players through offensive formations Ellwood City was likely to run.

I was very impressed with how much knowledge the coaches had of Ellwood City and what they run on offense. For example, they were telling the players exactly how many times they passed and how many runs they ran the ball from various formations. Plenty of advance film work being put in by the coaches.

After going through-walk throughs, the First-Team Defense went up against offensive players, who were running Ellwood City plays.

A few individual highlights when they were going full speed:
-Quarterback James Armstrong completed a deep pass to No. 6 John Ross. Perfectly placed ball.

-Nice turnover created by the defense as safety Avery Bokor tipped a slant pass across the middle, which was then intercepted by fellow freshman Tre Cameron.

-The offense created a big play up the right sidelines as Armstrong connected with running back Brody Rock ran a wheel route out of the backfield. Coaches weren’t happy with that as that was something that they were preparing for.

-Another example of the coaches demanding accountability and effort. Coach Mottes didn’t think the offense was being physical and were going just half-speed, so he stopped practice and the 11 guys that were on defense, had to do down and ups.

THE CLOSE OF PRACTICE:
-The practice ended with different position groups running to the other sideline and back. They had to all do so in a certain amount of time. The lineman ran together, the running backs and quarterbacks ran together, followed by the wide receivers and defensive backs.

The following players consistently led their groups and finished in the top one or two every single time:  No. 11 Vinny Boris, No. 7 Julian Baldwin, No. 5 James Armstrong, No. 26 Josh Brunton (was consistently the fastest), No. 55 Brian McCabe (was consistently the fastest lineman), No. 31 Jack Biega and No. 32 Greg Gigliotti.

Following the first practice sessions, HSN spoke with head coach Matt Mottes.