Lessons Learned in Scrimmage

By STEVE GALLUZZO | Sports Editor

Palisades Charter High School head football coach Dylen Smith could not have picked a better opponent for last Thursday’s scrimmage, August 10—a final tune-up heading into its August 18 season opener versus El Camino Real.

Reigning City Open Division champion Birmingham visited Stadium by the Sea and showed why it is the favorite to win a fourth straight crown, marching up and down the field at will, and gaining 10 yards or more on half of its 40 offensive plays.

The Dolphins, meanwhile, had flashes of success, but were unable to score until the final series of “red zone” plays, starting at the five-yard line.

“You want to measure yourself against the best and right now that’s Birmingham,” Smith said. “We obviously struggled to move the ball but that’s an outstanding team on the other sideline. This gives us a lot to work on going into next week. We kept our defense very vanilla and the same with our up-tempo offense. There’s a ton of stuff we didn’t run.”

Each team ran four sets of 10 plays starting from its own 40-yard line. In the event of a touchdown or if a first down was not picked up within four plays, the ball was returned to the 40 and the series continued. The referee kept track of the total number of plays run.

Following the four sets of 10, each team got five plays to practice its goal line offense. The scrimmage concluded with special teams as each side attempted two fields goals, two punts and two kick-offs.

Despite missing two of its starting offensive linemen, Birmingham scored on runs of 34, 60, 15 and 12 yards, and on a 60-yard touchdown pass from backup quarterback Tobias Bechdholdt to Dredon Fowles. Tailback Ronnell Hewitt added three scoring carries from the five-yard line.

In its red zone set of downs, Pali scored on a five-yard pass from first-string quarterback Roman La Scala and a three-yard run on its very last play.

“The most obvious thing we need to clean up is our tackling,” Smith said. “They have very talented players, but still we needed to do a better job wrapping up. As far as our offense, the timing is a bit off but it’s better to get our butts kicked now because starting next week the games count.”

In the preceding junior varsity game, Pali more than held its own with the Patriots, led by the accurate arm of sophomore quarterback Mattias Hernandez.

Now the Dolphins turn their attention to Friday’s home matchup against El Camino Real (JV at 4 p.m. and varsity at 7 p.m. at Stadium by the Sea).

Pali got the better of the visiting Royals 35-19 in their opener last fall, but the rosters are much different—as is the Dolphins’ no-huddle offense. The top three rushers from last year’s Division I finalist squad graduated while four of the top five receivers either graduated or transferred. In fact, only La Scala (1,946 yards and 24 touchdowns) and leading pass-catcher Braydon Sanford (36 receptions for 365 yards) return in the offensive backfield.