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Prep Football: High school season begins

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High school football players across San Diego County put on their helmets and pads on Monday, signaling the official start of the prep football season.

Poway, Rancho Bernardo, Del Norte and Maranatha Christian all opened fall camp this week. Players will go through four weeks of rigorous conditioning and drilling before the start of the regular season on Aug. 28.

“The first couple of days are always really exciting,” said Poway High senior Conor Boyle, who is aiming to be the Titans’ starting quarterback this season. “Everyone is ready to go and there is a lot of energy and the whole team is just amped up. It is a lot of fun to be able to get out there with the guys again.”

Rancho Bernardo High football coach Tristan McCoy, right, leads conditioning drills on Monday.
( / Sherri Dunlap)

High school football camps in the fall have undergone several changes in the past two years due to new rules being implemented to help with player safety. This season all high school teams in California will be subject to law AB 2127, which took effect on Jan. 1.

The law prohibits high schools and middle schools from holding full-contact practices for more than 90 minutes a day. It also limits the number of full-contact practices during the season to two per week and does not allow contact practices at all during the offseason.

This is in addition to the rules implemented by the California Interscholastic Federation, the governing body for high school sports in the state, last year. Those rules state that no team can hold two-a-days on consecutive days and teams are not allowed to have more than 18 hours of practice per week with a limit of four hours per day.

The end result for fall camps are the near extinction of two-a-days (when players practice for three to four hours in the morning, break for lunch and then come back to practice more), and less time spent doing full-contact drills.

“I have mixed feelings about it all,” Rancho Bernardo offensive and defensive lineman Devin LeCakes-Jones said. “I really want to get the extra work in for the season, but then it helps to get your body some rest. In my opinion, two-a-days are a great chance for a team to get better.”

Said Boyle: “It is what it is. It’s always good to have an extra break, but it would be nice to have a little more time to get the offense and defensive stuff done. Just more time to learn everything we need to know would be nice.”

Boyle said the Titans will be returning to the fly offense this season. Poway experimented with the spread-option the last few years and even pulled out the wing-T offense toward the end of last season.

“I think the fly offense is a good offense to have a nice mixture of running and passing,” Boyle said. “I think it keeps defenses on their toes, because there are always guys in motion and it works pretty good.”

Rancho Bernardo opens camp for the first time in a long time as one of the favorites to capture the San Diego Section Division II title. The Broncos went 10-3 and finished runner-up in the Division II championships last year. And that came after going a combined 2-19 in 2012 and 2013.

“I think camp will be different,” Broncos running back Milan Grice said. “I think the intensity will be up a lot more. There is a chip on our shoulder and teams are going to actually be after us this year, because of what we did last year.

“It’s a good feeling,” he added. “But we want to finish what we started and we want to get back to that championship game again.”

Del Norte opened camp with a new coach: Patrick Coleman. The former assistant to legendary Oceanside coach John Carroll replaces Leigh Cole, who stepped down in December after four years.

The Nighthawks went 5-6 last season and lost to Mt. Carmel in the first round of the Division III playoffs.

Please be on the lookout for our prep football preview, which will run on Aug. 27. For live updates and scores throughout the season, follow Michael Bower on Twitter @michaelpbower.

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