Superior Bobcats back on the football field

The Superior Bobcats were back on the field on Monday and were looking forward to a new season of high school football. Dan Lucier said about 37 kids showed for the first day of practice, which is about the same number as prior years.

Lucier said that the goals for the team this year are similar to the goals of prior years.

"Our goals are to kind of, like every year, they all kind of center around the team and putting the team first," Lucier said. "That's our biggest goal and then to have great practices because we realize we will play like we practice."

Lucier said that the first two days were spent teaching the kids how to practice and how things work. He said that the overall theme is a "sense of urgency." He noted that the strength of the team lies in "quickness and hard-playing, smart kids."

"Our scheme is to attack and go fast. That's one of our big strategies I guess," Lucier said. "We try and wear our opponents down."

Lucier said that the kids came in a bit out of shape for the first couple of days of practice, more so than in other years.

"We're a little out of shape, but we'll take care of that," he said.

Lucier is in his 30th year of coaching the Bobcats and said that while all the season's sort of flow together the one thing he wants to do as a coach is to bring the kids together.

"Or one heartbeat, as we like to say so that they play as one," Lucier said.

Lucier said that the Greek word for educate means to bring out and so he said that as coaches, "we want to bring out the best in them."

"If we do those things and win it will take care of itself," Lucier said. And we want to make it fun for the kids, even if it is a tremendous amount of hard work. It's a lot of encouragement and motivation to try to get them to give everything they can to reach their full potential."

And if they can reach their full potential and play at their full potential as a team then Lucier said he believes that is what makes a good season.

"Realizing that as the season goes we got ten weeks minimum and a lot of things happen in that amount of time so were constantly readjusting, changing gears. It's always under construction, but for me we're just teachers and we want to bring out the best in them as players," Lucier said.

Lucier said that they've got a good group of kids this year and as always it's always exciting to be starting a new season. The team will play their first game at home against Thompson Falls on September 3 and they have about two weeks to prepare. But as Lucier pointed out, "it's the same as everybody else."

"(Games against TFalls in the past) have gone pretty well," Lucier said. "They've always been a big rival of ours and we've always had a good game when we play them. We play them in Superior so that's nice. We get to open up at home."