Buckaroos decorate team helmets with dads as they gear up for Jacksboro tonight
As the Buckaroo varsity football players and coaches endured the heat this week, preparing to take on the Jacksboro Tigers in their season opener tonight, the players took some time out Wednesday to join their dads and other family members in decorating their game helmets with the team’s decals.
Dads and other family members joined the Buckaroo varsity football players and coaches on Wednesday evening to put the decals on the players’ helmets for the season. For more photos from the event, click here to see the Breckenridge Texan photo gallery. (Photo by Tony Pilkington/Breckenridge Texan)
Afterward, Head Football Coach and Athletic Director Casey Hubble took a few minutes to discuss where he thinks the Buckaroos are as a team as they prepare to kick off the season.
This is the second year dads in Breckenridge have joined their sons to help them decorate their game helmets with the team decals and their jersey numbers.
Hubble said the Decals with Dads event is a way for the coaching staff to give back to the parents. He said it takes a lot of trust for a parent to turn over their child to a coaching staff and allow them to push them as hard as they do. He said between school, practice and life, parents of high school athletics don’t get to spend that much time with their kids.
“It’s just a way for us to show that we appreciate them and let them have a chance to spend some time with them,” Hubble said. “It’s a way we can allow them to come in and spend some quality time with their kid and hopefully have a special moment
Hubble said he thinks it means something to the parents to get to come fix the helmets up with their kids as they are getting ready to go watch them play when the season starts.
“Once you make varsity, the career is usually about over, so they kid gets to spend some special time with their parents,” he said.
As for the players, Hubble said, putting the decals on their helmets signifies the season is about to start. He said they’ve been practicing and had a few scrimmages, but those are not Friday night games, and decorating the helmets is like putting the final touches on getting ready do it for real.
Feeling proud of the players going into the season
Hubble said he feels good about tonight’s game and is really proud of the hard work the kids have been putting in to get ready for the game. He said the amount of work that goes into getting ready for the first game is unbelievable.
“We finished in November last year, and they been working ever since,” Hubble said. “Not a whole lot of time off; go right back to work, take a break during Christmas, and the in the spring, it’s pretty much grind.”
He said, then in the summer, they do strength and conditioning training for about six weeks.
“So you’re looking at about eight or nine months of work to get ready for something,” he said. “I think that’s an extremely valuable thing that athletics teaches kids, because we live in a world where we want what we want and we want it right now. So the ability to have some resolve and show up day after day after day and put the work in. Now it’s time to go and get some of it back.”
Scrimmage games gave insight to this year’s Bucks
Hubble said he learned some good things from the scrimmage games, things they did well. He said they don’t look at the score that much during the games, although if they are keeping score, he’s going to want to win. But mostly, the scrimmages games were really about evaluating video.
He said the coaching staff has spent a lot of time studying the video from the games to see if the kids are doing exactly what they are teaching them.
“You know, we don’t have an effort problem. Our kids play hard; they’re not scared; they want to do well,” he said. “So it’s really up to us to evaluate what we’re seeing on video and then make corrections to the kids or ourselves. If what we’re doing isn’t working, maybe we’re the problem and we have make changes sometimes, too. It’s not always just about the kids; sometimes it’s about us.”
What the coach feels good about with this year’s team
Hubble said he feels good about the team’s depth this year. The size of the varsity team is back up with about 28 or 29 players on the varsity team, compared to last year when they were down to 23 or 24 players at times. Because of that, he said, there wasn’t whole lot of pressure last year on the players by their teammates.
“We’ve got some kids now to where, if you’re not going to step up and get it done, somebody else will,” he said. “Competition brings out the best in everybody; we don’t have any favorites. We’re trying to put the best team on the field, and we love all of them. Kids pushing each other, I’d say is the best thing we’ve got going right now.”
Starters set for tonight’s game
Going into tonight’s game, Hubble said he already has a pretty good idea of who the team’s starters are going to be, and so do the kids.
“But that could change rapidly,” he said. “We could get a guy hurt and the backup becomes a starter immediately. Or, if a kid’s having a bad night, somebody else can go in and make the plays; that’s always a possibility.”
Looking at the Tigers
Looking at Jacksboro, Hubble said they’re just a fundamentally sound team. He said they’re going to come off the ball hard and defensively; they‘re a lot like the Buckaroos. He said they’re going to play a base defense and not blitz every play, like they’ve been during the past two scrimmage games.
He said coach Brannon Rodgers came in last year and revamped the team, and when the Bucks scrimmaged them last year shortly after he took over, they looked better already than any time they had played them in past.
“They made a three-round run in the playoffs,” Hubble said. “He’s doing a good job, and I got a lot of respect for him. We’re just going to have to line up and beat ’em. Offensively they’re going to try to grind it out and then make you pay for not being disciplined with play action pass. So we’re going to have to be real disciplined and really physical, ” Hubble said.
Hubble said the Tigers have lost a lot of kids who graduated last year, but from what he’s seen on video, they have another good group players coming up.
Playing one game at a time
Heading into non-district play, Hubble said each game will be a learning experience. He said the Bucks are not going to be in mid-season form in the beginning of the season and they hope to be better at the end of the year than they were in mid-season.
He said football is a game you have to play to get good at it. He said you can play summer and spring football or things like seven-on-seven or maybe a lineman challenge, where they work on little pieces of the game, but the game of football can only be played one time a year, during the season when they’re playing it.
“Yeah, we’re just going to have to get better every week; that’s always going to our goal as a team, is get better every week,” he said. “Make gains every week and just get better every day and focus on what we’re doing that day. We can’t win a playoff game Friday night. We gotta go play each play and try to win that game, and then we’ll focus on the next one. We’ll kinda just try to focus on being 1 and 0 each week.”
Bucks heavy on seniors and juniors players
Hubble said one of the strong parts of this year’s Buckaroo team is they have a lot of returning seniors and juniors. He said a coach always has to play with the best players, regardless of what grade they’re in, but the player is going to be better when he’s a junior or senior.
“It’s always nice to have depth,” he said. “These two groups of seniors and juniors have kept their numbers up and done a good job of buying in and loving football and sticking with it, so that’s allowed us to have some decent numbers.”
Hubble said that during the scrimmage games he saw the senior and junior playing experience come out but at times felt like they should have been a little further along on some things.
Some of that comes back on the coaches, he said, and they should be doing a better job and making sure they are where they needed to be.
“As a staff, we’re never going to look to blame kids,” Hubble said. “We’re the professionals. We’re the ones that get paid to do this. So we’re always going to look at ourselves first. If it’s not where it needs to be, we’re either coaching it or allowing it to happen. We’re always going to look at ourselves first and then focus on trying to get the kids to do it better.”
Tonight’s game
Hubble said he feels like the Bucks are a very versatile team this year. He said they’re a spread offense now and their passing game should be better than it was last year. But, he said, they’re going to take what the defense gives them at tonight’s game.
“We’re not going to force a round peg in square hole,” he said. “If they’re bitin’ in everybody on the run, we’re going to try to throw the ball and make them pay for it. If they’re bailing everybody out of there, we’re going to hand it off and run. And we’ve got guys at every position that I think we can make some of those things happen.”
Kickoff for tonight’s game between the Breckenridge Buckaroos and the Jacksboro Tigers is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at Tiger Stadium in Jacksboro, 1400 N. Main. The game will also be broadcast live in Breckenridge at 7:30 p.m. on KLXK FM-93.5 with Lance Kitchens and Charlie Parker. The pregame show on the station will begin at 7 p.m.
Breckenridge ISD Athletic Director and Head Football Coach Casey Hubble talks to the parents and players gathered Wednesday evening for Decals with Dads. (Photo by Tony Pilkington/Breckenridge Texan)
Story by Tony Pilkington/Breckenridge Texan
Cutline, top photo: Dads and other family members helped the Breckenridge High School varsity football players put the decals on their helmets in preparation for the first game of the season, scheduled for Friday, Aug. 31. (Photo by Tony Pilkington/Breckenridge Texan)
