Offensive line beginning to come together for Huntingdon

Offensive line beginning to come together for Huntingdon

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – With just two days remaining before the start of classes, the Huntingdon football team held a short practice on Saturday. Coming off of Friday's scrimmage, the Hawks practiced for about an hour to work out some kinks.

"More than anything, we worked on fundamentals and just tried to break a sweat and work out some soreness from the scrimmage," Huntingdon head coach Mike Turk said. "Our main goal today was to correct a few mistakes and work on conditioning."

The Hawks will practice in shoulder pads and shorts at 3:30 p.m. on Sunday. It will be the final practice before school starts on Monday. After school starts, Huntingdon's practices will be held in the afternoon.

"It's always a challenge when school starts. For 10 days, our guys really haven't had anything to worry about other than football," Turk said. "When classes begin, the focus shifts to academics during the day and practice in the afternoon. It's always an adjustment the first few days."

With 10 practices behind them, the Hawks have a better idea of what their offensive line will look like this season. Huntingdon entered the preseason with three big holes on the offensive front with the departure of Eric Stroud, Garrison Johnson and A.J. Swift.

But Turk said a starting five is slowly taking shape with seniors Aaron Odom and Derik Wolfe, juniors Will Dake and Joey Peacock and sophomore Davian Barnett.

"We've got a mixed bag of experience on the offensive line," Turk said. "We have two guys (Odom and Wolfe) back that started every game last season, another (Peacock) that started a couple of games and played in several and two (Barnett and Dake) that didn't start, but did see action in games and have some experience under their belts.

"So really, we don't have as much experience as we'd like, but each of these guys has some game experience."

Turk said it looks like junior Taylor Long, sophomore Chance Williams and freshman Chael Pridgen will also make a push for playing time.

Odom, who graded out at 85.4 percent on 764 plays as a junior, has the most experience of the group. Odom has started every game the past two seasons and has played 1,825 snaps since his freshman season. Wolfe played 742 snaps as a junior and graded out at 81.5 percent.

"The good thing about Aaron is this will be his fourth season. He started some games for us as a freshman in 2009 and has really been a consistent guy for us ever since," Turk said. "Derik started all 10 games last season and was solid. You look for guys like that to set the tempo each day. They're both hard workers and are definitely two of our leaders up front."