Owensboro Catholic football wants to be in top physical condition
Jun. 7—Owensboro Catholic's football team did a lot of work in the weight room during spring practice. It concentrated more on starting the process of being in top physical condition over the next three or four months heading into the 2023 high school football season.
"I have my most experienced team returning," Catholic coach Jason Morris said. "The spring was more about getting the team together in the weight room. We didn't even put on pads this year in the spring. We were going through the basics on how we practice with the younger kids."
The spring also allowed Vince Carrico to get a lot of the reps at quarterback, where he will be the backup to Brady Atwell, who will be a junior along with Vince Carrico. Atwell is also a prominent baseball player for Catholic and that was his focus in the spring.
"Vince is a very talented kid, we're excited about his potential," Morris said. "Our offense doesn't change any at all when Vince goes back there now."
"We're deep at receiver, we're a junior and senior heavy team, with a very talented sophomore class coming in behind it," Morris said.
The spring also allowed some new offensive linemen to work in, as Catholic lost several from last year's team.
"It was just a new look as they start to learn some chemistry together," Morris said of the newer offensive linemen.
Going into this June practice-workout schedule Morris thinks the team is getting better in how it practices.
"I feel like we've gotten better, the way we practice continues to improve," Morris said. "We've done more trying to stay away from injuries, we want to try to keep our best players as healthy as we can."
Catholic will continue this 3-day a week schedule until the KHSAA dead period starts June 25, and the team will return July 10.
"Right now it's all about making sure kids who are going to go off to camps, make sure they are in the top physical condition as they can be in," Morris said of players trying to be seen in individual summer camps for college recruiting. "At the same time we want to make sure our younger guys are caught up to schemes. When we come out of the dead period we can show them how to do it. We want to make sure get it installed first and then go back and show them how to do it. It doesn't matter how good a blocker you are if don't know who to block."
Catholic went 9-4 last season, reaching the third round of the KHSAA Class 2-A football playoffs before falling to Lexington Christian 33-27. The Aces are confident looking at the 2023 season.
"We're very excited," Morris said. "We've worked very hard over the last five years, the classes that came before continued to make stepping stones to this level. If you can win third round in western Kentucky you can win it all."
