CRESTVIEW — Crestview High School’s football team took to the field of Jack Foster Stadium on Friday evening for the Red and White scrimmage.
The scrimmage was a sneak peek to Friday's jamboree when the Bulldogs host Navarre and Escambia.
The first quarter kicks off at 6 p.m. with Crestview taking on Navarre. The Bulldogs play Escambia in the third quarter.
First-year Crestview coach Tim Hatten isn't concerned about winning the jamboree.
"I don't think you get any points for winning jamborees," he said. "In my 14-year high school career I don't think we won but two or three of them. We just want to execute.
"We want to do what we do and do it well. If that means we score more points than the other team, so be it. But if we don't, it doesn't count and we are just going to make sure we keep everybody healthy."
Keeping players healthy and tracking how well players have grasped the fundamentals are the points of Friday's game.
For the most part, Hatten was as pleased with the scrimmage as he has been with the team’s development.
"I think we did some things really, really good that the up tempo offense can do," he said. "And we did some things that were not very good. But it gave us a base to learn off of.
"We've only got a couple of run plays in. We will get a couple more in next week and try to be a little bit more dynamic in some different formations. We ran a lot of formations against our defense and they see them in practice, but when you see them at game speed it's a little bit different."
Hatten said facing an up-tempo offense in a game situation challenged the defense in ways that seeing the same offense in practice can't. The defense must be able to adjust on the fly, and Hatten believes it is just a matter of time before that happens.
"We are not anywhere close to where we can be, but we are getting there," he said. "We are going to come out and be aggressive and do what we need to do. We are going to be OK."
Hatten will start evaluating every aspect of the team as soon as spring practice ends.
"We will get in the weight room and we will talk," he said. "We will talk about what we did right in the spring and what we did wrong in the spring. We will work on some organizational things that we need to do in the locker room, and the way we do things and structure and try to get them in a routine.
"We will try to make it a little more disciplined in how we approach work and practice and school. Finals are coming up, so we will talk to them about those kinds of things so we can keep everybody eligible too."
Randy Dickson is the Crestview News Bulletin’s sports editor. Email him at randyd@crestviewbulletin.com, tweet him @BigRandle, or call 682-6524.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Bulldogs host Navarre, Escambia in jamboree