The team looks forward to its first official game this weekend at Kent.
The scrimmage was the team’s first matchup of the season and highlighted its offensive and defensive potential, according to Assistant Coach Louis Bernieri.
In an email to The Phillipian, Bernieri wrote, “Considering how little practice time we’ve had this fall (Brooks as well), we were pleased with the scrimmage. We ran the ball well, made some big catches, and played disciplined defense. We’ve shown we have the potential to be a good team on both sides of the ball. Most importantly, we came out of the scrimmage relatively healthy.”
According to Ben Carbeau ’21, the scrimmage was designed to allow each team to conduct sixteen plays on both offense and defense.
Carbeau said, “[The scrimmage] wasn’t a traditional football format where we play with a clock. We did eight plays on offense and eight plays on defense, then another eight plays on offense and then eight plays on defense. We didn’t really keep score, but we ended up scoring twice, and they didn’t.”
According to Jordan, the team had strong performances from players on both sides of the ball. Hunter Lane PG’20 and Carbeau had strong performances on defense, while newcomer Mark Witt ’20 and Troy Pollock ’21 helped Andover find the end zone twice..
Jordan said, “I think Hunter Lane, a Post-Graduate, did really well at the defensive end, and he really blew up some plays. Ben Carbeau did a really great job on defense as a linebacker. Offensively, we had a couple of receivers, like Mark Witt, who had some nice catches. Troy Pollock has shown great effort all around in practice, and in the scrimmage it really showed on the field.”
Backpacking off of Andover’s successful performance this past weekend, the team is looking to use the coming week of practice to solidify its skills and prepare for its first game of the season against Kent, according to Julio Dahl ’22 and Carbeau.
“After another week of preparation, I feel like we will be able to play well on the road.We played well, but we made small mistakes that Kent would’ve been able to capitalize on, like waiting a long time for plays to develop,” said Dahl.
Carbeau added, “I think we still need to tighten some things up, like our assignments on offense. We play Kent next week which is going to be a full game and they’re going to be a really tough opponent, so that will be a good test for us. We’ll just need to have a good focused week of practice.”
