El Camino Football Plans Comeback

First year head varsity coach Mark Turner is watching a defensive drill on the El Camino Colt football field and does not like what he sees.  He decides to jump in and show his players exactly how he wants them to execute a tackle.

For Turner, this drill is especially important since one of the weak spots of last year's team was their defense.

Coach Turner hopes to turn around a Colts team that went a disappointing 2-7-1 last year. He hopes to do this behind a young but talented team led by senior running back Nate Huey.

"Last year's team had a great year running the ball since we had a lot of fast guys with great open field moves," Turner said. "Our downfall was on defense, where we seemed unable to tackle anyone."

 This Colts team has a bunch of players from the JV team that are moving up to the Varsity squad along with returning seniors Huey, offensive lineman Trevor Kelly and tight end Justin Eclaveva. Turner believes that Kelly is his best player and has the potential to play college football.

"Kelly is good on both sides of the ball, but he is best on defense where he plays defensive tackle," Turner said. "He is good at getting pressure on the opposing quarterback and basically creating major headaches for the opposing team."

Turner said their goal for this year on offense is to finish their plays, since last year, the effort was there, but they did not always execute properly. He said the strength of this team should be its running game since his team has a good offensive line.           

"We have three seniors returning this year on the OL, so that should make it pretty easy for Huey and the other running backs to gain lots of yards," Turner said. "We have an inexperienced starting quarterback this year, so we need our running game to be good, and I believe it will be."

Turner said the goal on defense this year is for the players to remember their responsibilities and not lose focus. The Colts are changing their defensive scheme this year from a 4-4 or 3-5 (which is four defensive linemen and 4 linebackers or 3 DL men and 5 LB) to a 4-3 scheme (with 4 DL men and 3 LB).

"The players are catching on fast to the defensive system," Turner said. "I think it helped that we introduced them to it at the summer practices, so they had time to adjust to it."

Turner is aiming high: his goal for this year is a league championship since he figures there is not much carryover for the different teams in the league.

"Every year is different; you never know what will happen during the off-season. One school that was great last year might be bad this year. Players transfer to other schools, new players come in," Turner said. "I truly believe that we have a legitimate chance to win a league championship this year."