Spring football began for Northwest last Saturday, and coach Leonard McAngus said he is already impressed with what he sees.
With much of the defense still intact from last season, the Northwest coach said he is expecting the defensive unit to help anchor the Texans in 2009.
"I thought the first day went real well," McAngus said. "We decided to scrimmage the varsity guys, and we had a lot of guys rise to the occasion. I thought defensively we looked very good, because we have so many kids coming back, and I saw some bright spots on offense as well."
McAngus said his players are in good shape at this point as well.
"We’re in good condition," McAngus said. "They’ve been doing off-season [workouts] all winter so they are in really good shape right now."
Much of the attention for next fall has centered on the quarterback position, with Brysen Curb and Taylor Barnhill being the two front-runners, but Northwest has a major hole to fill at running back.
Drew Ashley, a top running back in District 5-5A the past two seasons, is graduating, and McAngus said a few players are hoping to fill the position.
"I think we’ve got three or four kids that could do it," McAngus said. "It may be a running back-by-committee sort of deal, but there are a lot of kids on our JV that played a lot of running back last year that I think will compete for it."
McAngus said on Tuesday night that the objectives through the first part of the spring training have been mainly to learn and work on fundamentals.
"The focus is two-fold," McAngus said. "We want to learn our offense and defense, and getting that taught to our kids, but also focus on blocking and tackling. Those are the most important things."
Because of realignment, Northwest will not have some of the same opponents next season as it did last year, including Carroll, Haltom, and Richland, but McAngus said he does not believe it will get any easier for the Texans, either.
"I think it is a very tough district," McAngus said. "We lose Southlake, but we pick up Trinity. I think Fossil Ridge and L.D. Bell were both playoff teams last year, so I think we are in an even tougher district than we were before."