Owatonna High holds football camp

For boys growing up in Owatonna, Husky football is a way of life. The 5A Minnesota powerhouse is known for generating some of the state’s best players.  
For three days this past week, kids of all ages had the opportunity not only to hang out with some members of the varsity staff but its players too.
Owatonna High School held their 20 annual football camp on the grounds for boys in all age groups. 
Jeff Williams, who’s been at the helm for 21 years, says that the camp is all about helping create a pipeline for the junior high and high school teams of the future. “We are trying to build and establish a progression,” he said.
The camp held 200 players from the third grade all the way to upcoming sophomores. With the obvious difference is size between the age groups; Williams had members of his staff coach the third through six grade players inside the stadium. 
He stated that the reasoning behind this is to give the young kids a glimpse of the future. 
“Hey I’ll get a chance to play here someday,” he mentioned. 
He also added that the players in that age group were primarily individual fundamentals for particular positions and play a ton of lead up games-getting them familiar with competition.
As for the seventh and eighth graders, Williams said they have the players pick a specific position and have them work on a deeper level of the fundamentals.
 “The things we go over are things that they will really need to excel at the position in their near future,” he added.
For the 40 incoming freshman and 25 upcoming sophomores, Williams stated that’s when the camp become more about adjusting them to the high school level. 
“It’s a very scheme oriented camp and the faster that we can get these young players acclimated to the high school level, the less time we have to spend on it when we open camp,” Williams said. 
He also added that they held their camp for the juniors and seniors the previous week, allowing for more hands on time with the younger players.
He added that for defensive lineman and linebackers, they teach the players how to adjust to certain formations and how to react to motion. 
While the camp is has a primary focus on the adjustments to high school football, its not to say that they forget about teaching and refining fundamentals. 
“We do specialized drills call 12 pack which are 12 drills that the kids do everyday to improve their footwork,” he added.  Williams mentioned that by doing the 12 pack drills everyday, the kids are already aware of the drill and are able to hit the ground running for two a days.
Walking throughout the camp, some of the drills that were being taught were ones that should really allow for the game to slow down for some of these players mentally when camp starts.
An example of that was over in the defensive line drills, where varsity defensive line coach Delles Solie was teaching some of the younger players about how to read and react to specific blocks against the run. 
From reading down blocks to how to properly set up your opponent during a rush. The amount of hands on work that the coaching staff had with the players were in expendable.
What I found was the best aspect of the camp was that not only was it being coach by members of the varsity coaching staff and the players that a handful of alumni were out to help as well.
Creating that family environment is sports is key and Williams is all for it with his football program.
 “ We always tell the players that tradition never graduates so it’s great to see the turnout every year,” he explained.
Owatonna started their preparations for a state championship run on Monday.