Clovis progresses at NM State scrimmages

Clovis High’s football team continues its small steps toward the 2018 season, with more of those steps taken over this past weekend.

The Wildcats took part in the New Mexico State University 7-on-7 scrimmages in Las Cruces, and they saw some good things, some that needed tweaking. It’s all part of the deal in June — getting it right, getting better, ironing out the kinks, in preparation for the curtain rising on Aug. 24 at Hobbs.

Overall, Clovis went 2-2 in pool play, earning a fourth seed out of 19 teams, before narrowly losing to Mountain View of Tuscon, Arizona in the opening round, 19-18.

“We really had a chance to win that first round of the tournament,” Clovis’ second-year head coach Cal Fullerton said. “We took it down and just ran out of time. We just couldn’t get it in the end zone at the end.”

Still, a one-point loss to a powerful out-of-state team — one that wound up second in the tournament behind fellow Arizona team Red Mountain — was a fairly positive sign, especially for a Wildcats team with two months still to go before its season opener.

Fullerton saw improvement from the previous weekend’s 7-on-7 scrimmages at Eastern New Mexico University.

“The biggest difference, I think, was our effort on the field,” he said. “I don’t think kids took plays off. We caught the ball a lot better than we did the week before and I thought our defense made a lot of really big plays and made some big stops. ... Against Mountain View, we had a chance to win, probably mainly because of the defense.”

Clovis actually lost to Mountain View twice, first in pool play by a 21-14 score. The Wildcats then continued pool play by defeating Cibola 29-13, losing to Rio Rancho 31-28, and beating Centennial 38-21.

“I thought both sides (of the ball) had spurts of greatness against Cibola and against Centennial,” Fullerton said. “I thought our team played really well ... Against Centennial, I though our defense and offense both played great.”

Injury-wise, the Wildcats held up again. Except for a relatively minor thumb injury to running back DeMarco Fitch, the ’Cats have escaped the last two weekends of 7-on-7 scrimmaging unscathed. “That’s probably the first time we’ve come back from two tournaments without an injury,” Fullerton said.

Another bright spot for Fullerton was the continued performance of his linemen, who after placing second in the ENMU Lineman Challenge on June 15, took third out of 34 at New Mexico State this past weekend. In the challenges that include tasks like tug-of-war and pushing sleds, the Wildcats offensive and defensive lines — coached by Charles Jordan — keep displaying strength and agility against some of the Southwest’s toughest and bulkiest competitors.

“There were some big-time schools there and some pretty big linemen,” Fullerton said. “We did pretty well.”

Clovis still has more work to do throughout July, before two-a-day practices begin on Aug. 6. But the work so far has progressed reasonably well. “I think we’re ahead of where we were last year,” Fullerton said. “It’s just something that we’ve got to keep harping on and our leaders keep harping on.”

Indeed, leadership could be the key to Clovis’ upcoming season.

“When things are going really good, I think our team chemistry is great,” Fullerton said, “and when things go bad, I think that’s something we really need to work on. When we’re winning, everybody is cheering everybody on and picking everybody up, and when we’re losing, we have to have that same mentality. ... We have to develop some of our players that are leaders. We’ve got some that are pulling the boat that we’re pushing and we’ve got to get everybody pushing the same way.”