Rams get in reps

PORTALES — Patience is a virtue, but even with a young football team, Portales coach Jaime Ramirez feels good about his team’s progress thus far. On Saturday morning, the Rams completed their first week of practices, leading up to their Aug. 24 opener against Hope Christian.

“The nice thing about this week is we got a lot of reps in,” Ramirez said. “You could see each and every day, us improving. That was a positive. (Friday) night, we did an inter-squad scrimmage, the last part of our practice. We did offense and defense for an hour, doing our drills. Then we finished the last 45 minutes of our practice with some live hitting.”

The scrimmage was a success, as Ramirez says that all of his players got a chance to show what they can do. In fact, many even got extra work in, which should give Portales a little clearer picture of what its depth chart could look like in the coming weeks.

Perhaps the biggest thing to come out of Friday’s scrimmage was the competitive nature that Ramirez’ young ballclub showed. According to Ramirez, his kids were pretty fired up to face off with one another, and the overall energy felt good during the scrimmage.

Speaking of scrimmages, Portales will have one next Friday against Robertson. The Cardinals, of course, beat the Rams in the 4A semifinal last November, denying Portales a shot at back-to-back state titles, in the process.

From now until then, a lot of work will be done to help prepare the Rams for that scrimmage. “We don’t have a whole lot of our offense in right now,” Ramirez explained. “We have so many new starters at each position, and new guys that haven’t gotten a lot of varsity experience. We haven’t gone as quickly as we have in the past.

“We’re really learning a lot about our team. I think we have maybe a couple of running plays to each side in, and a few screens, play action passes and dropback passes. Just not a whole lot we have in right now. We expect to put in more of each this next week. We scrimmage Robertson on Friday, so we’ll try to have at least 70 percent of the offense in by then.”

All in all, while it’s still baby steps, Ramirez was pleased with this opening week. Portales capped off the week with the aforementioned Saturday practice, focusing on team offense, defense and special teams work. “I thought we ended practice well this week. Definitely improved from day to day.”