HLT scrimmage sets stage for week zero

The Highland-Lone Tree football team took the playing field for the first time in 20 years on Friday at Highland High School for an intrasquad scrimmage, giving fans their first look at the combined team.

HLT Head Coach Thayne McElhinney split the squads evenly for Friday’s scrimmage, where players from both schools had their first opportunity to show their growth in new systems.

“It was nice to see kids play football,” McElhinney said. “We got to see kids in some different places. It was nice to see how well they responded, trying something new.”

For Highland players, McElhinney’s scheme is a drastic shift from what the Huskies ran last fall, built around modern spread concepts and placing more responsibility on the hands of starting quarterback Caleb Wheeler. According to McElhinney, the junior signal caller has stepped up as a leader in addition to learning a much more complex offense from the ground up.

“He’s doing a really good job. He’s asking questions all the time. He’s a natural leader, he really embraces that role, which is nice to have as your quarterback. He understands where he needs to go.”

For players from Lone Tree, the challenges entering the year surrounded the jump from eight-man to 11-man football. Arguably the biggest burden fell to Travis Ford, HLT’s starting left tackle and the leader of the team in the trenches. Ford was a tight end for the Lions last fall, a position that in McElhinney’s eight-man system functioned as a hybrid pass-catcher and offensive lineman, sometimes acting as a move blocker and route runner like traditional tight ends and other times blocking in a traditional tackle role.

“He was doing part of this run scheme last year, but he was also catching the ball,” McElhinney said of Ford. “I think adjusting to not getting the ball is a little bit different for him, but he’s done a really good job. He’s just pretty raw, but he’s young and aggressive, which we like to see.”

Bring on the Bears

The Huskies now prepare to take on the BGM Bears in Friday’s week zero season opener, with both teams going into the matchup with little film to prepare for the game.

The Bears return almost no offensive production from last year’s 7-3 squad after losing quarterback Beau Burns to graduation, who led Class A a year ago in total touchdowns, rushing touchdowns and rushing yards. BGM also saw leading pass catcher Landon Hassett and top running back Nathan Findlay graduate, leaving the team with just 123 rushing yards and 209 receiving yards returning.

McElhinney and Lone Tree saw BGM’s JV squad last year in an early-season bout that went 70-12 in the Bears’ favor, giving him some idea of what he’ll see on Friday.

“They were athletic for a Class A school,” McElhinney said of the Bears’ JV squad a year ago. “It’s nice to have some athletes because you can plug and play where they need [players] to be. I expect them to spread it out on us, I expect them to flow really well on defense and be very fundamentally sound. We just have to do the same, play aggressive and have some fun.”

Friday’s game is slated to kick off at 7 p.m. in Brooklyn, when a new era will officially begin for Highland-Lone Tree football.