May 20—The Ada High football team has one week of spring football under its belt and head coach Brad O'Steen said his team has learned a lot in a few short days.

"We've had three really, really good practices. I love our mindset. I love our attentiveness. The kids are working extremely hard. I'm proud of their overall effort," O'Steen told The Ada News prior to Friday's practice session. "We've had a really good start now we just have to keep it going."

O'Steen and his staff are throwing in a few new wrinkles into the Ada playbook for the 2023 season and he said spring football is a great time to start teaching his team some new tricks.

"We have some new coaches and we'll have a different type system this year — it won't be a wholesale change or anything like that — we just want to utilize our talent in the best way possible and play to our strengths," O'Steen said. "During the second week we're going to try and install more and give them a more detailed version of what we're going to do longterm."

One of the main focuses this spring and in the fall will be fine-tuning the Cougars' offensive line.

"Being able to block people upfront is our main goal on offense. We're trying to do some things where we can handle people better," he said. "We struggled at times last year when played people that were bigger and stronger than us — like the McAlesters, the Poteaus, the Wagoners. We want to find a system to implement up front that will give our kids the best chance at success."

Attendance at spring drills has hovered right around the 50-player mark.

"We've gained a few and lost some. I figure we'll stay around that 45 to 50 range," O'Steen said.

O'Steen said both his players and members of his coaching staff always look forward to the end of May.

"Ending the school year with spring football is always fun for the kids and coaches," he said.

O'Steen believes the Cougars can build on the successes his team had in the 2022 season.

"I felt like we had a fairly successful year. We had a decent football season, a good basketball season and a really good track season, being state runner-up. And that was with a lot of our football guys," he said. "Winning breeds winning. I'm really excited about what our track program has done and we hope that can carry over into the fall."

Spring football practices resume next week and the team will meet from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before wrapping up the two-week drills with morning workouts from 9:45 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. on Thursday and Friday.

Summer Pride workouts will begin in June and will be Monday through Thursday for the entire month.

Ada will kick off the 2023 season on Aug. 25 with a "Zero week" contest at Durant.