San Marcos warms up in scrimmage against Laredo United South

SOMERSET — John Walsh is used to having a whole play sheet as he is known for always having one of the top offenses over his career.

In San Marcos’ scrimmage against Laredo United South on Friday, the head coach went with a skeleton playsheet, meaning the calls were limited and monotonous. His team also was without two of his three core running backs. The Rattlers and Panthers were allotted multiple possessions on both sides of the ball before officially turning on the clock to play a half of football. Throughout the scrimmage, both teams had stretches of good play but each of the head coaches felt what they had seen was enough, effectively ending the game at 14-14.

“As a whole, I'm really pleased with just the physicality and the effort from freshmen to our seniors. I mean, our sub-varsity scrimmage was fun, it's fun having kids flying around everywhere and it sounded different in the varsity scrimmage. I missed it. It just sounded more physical. I was really pleased there,” Walsh said. “We made a bunch of mistakes, too, but that’s why you do scrimmages, so you can make the mistakes now and learn from them. I know some of (the players) were a little mad at themselves but we want you to come out here and do good but then make the mistake now so we can fix it before just the real deal next week.”

Senior defensive tackle Alex Robinson elaborated on what it meant to finally play against someone other than his teammates.

“Man, oh my goodness, it felt great … (Last year) was just a rough year for everybody. It kind of gets boring hitting your teammates every day,” Robinson said. “When we came out here we were all juiced up, all fired up ready to go. “

The shortened playbook limited the offense to about eight plays and a pared-down run game but there were some standouts on the offensive side of the ball. 

Junior quarterback Isaiah DeLeon, after sitting out two possessions, flashed elite speed down the middle for a 15-yard run. That set up a 55-yard play-action touchdown pass to junior receiver Ryan Hix, who found the end zone unscathed. The San Marcos offensive line held up, giving DeLeon countless time in the backfield to make plays. 

The brightest spot on the Rattler roster was occupied by the whole defensive line. Specifically, juniors Jake Darling, Ja'Kwavius Simmons and Robinson put the Panther quarterback on the move on multiple plays and racked up several tackles for a loss. United South scored on its first possession but didn’t score again until a 20-yard touchdown run up the middle, which tied the total score at 14-14. 

Tonight didn’t answer all of the questions but it did show that the weaknesses on both sides of the line have been addressed. Walsh sounds more optimistic about his team's ability to block this season versus last year's team. 

“(It’s) just their ability to buy in and they have really bought in. The way we train is proven and Coach (Karl) Thompson went through it and now he knows how to teach it. So they've bought into his method,” Walsh said. “Our past protection was incredible. You know, we didn't try to run the ball tonight but you can just see up front, we can win some wars in the trenches.”

San Marcos will hit the road to take on former district opponent New Braunfels in its first matchup of the regular season on Friday at 7 p.m. 

“You didn't see a whole bunch of run offense out here today because we've been working on New Braunfels for eight days. So we kind of came out here with a skeleton run game, which is why it looked kind of blah tonight,” Walsh said. “We’re going to go back to what we did the first seven days, and we've been working on the New Braunfels run game. We went and looked at them, scrimmaged (San Antonio) Reagan last week. So, we got a pretty good beat on them. We expect to be even more efficient in practice this week.”