Practice notes: Cocoa, Cocoa Beach, Palm Bay high school football
The Cocoa Tigers, who made it to the Class 4A state championship game last season, started their first official week of practice this week as well.
Cocoa has been known to play a tough schedule, and this season will be no different. They open up their preseason against Merritt Island and will face out-of-county powerhouses Orlando Jones and St. Thomas Aquinas.
"We're playing Merritt Island for the kickoff classic, and you know they were in the (5A) state championship last year. So that's going to show us where we are at," head coach Ryan Schneider said. "Then we get to play Orlando Jones, easily one of the top 10 teams in the state."
More practice notes: Merritt Island, Melbourne, Rockledge high school football
Last season, the Tigers went 11-2, falling to Venice by one point and then to Cardinal Gibbons by three points in the state championship game.
"We challenge ourselves here at Cocoa, and we always want to play the best," he said. "Right now, we're just concentrating on being the best team we can be, and we're focusing on Merritt Island. Like I said, they were in the state championship last year, and coach (Tyler) Murray is doing a great job ever there, and we have to be ready to go."
Cocoa Beach
The Minutemen program inherited by Ben Waldrop after the 2020 season faced a numbers crunch from lack of interest in the student population. Waldrop began to work on that quickly, and the roster could reach into the 70s or close to it this year.
At Tuesday's practice, 46 were in attendance already, with school more than a week away.
"We're just pushing the kids to give more than they're normally used it," Waldrop said. "It's hard to see the results on those things right away, but over time, little by little, you start to see the gains."
That was apparent in May in jamboree action at Titusville High, where Cocoa Beach outscored both the host Terriers and MCC, each in two quarters of action.
Palm Bay
Pirates coach Jake Owens, just before some end-of-practice conditioning on Tuesday, gathered his team and reminded them of close games lost in the fourth quarter last year, his first leading the program.
He then led his players in a running drill designed to simulate pushing through the final period, but he also spoke of growing experience and depth that will help in that area.
"Last year, sometimes we started 11 or 12 sophomores in some games," he said. "That group is a really big group, that junior class, so that's exciting. Our numbers are really good, especially for the first two days of practice, when school hasn't started yet. We have everybody out here working, so it's an exciting thing."
Contact McCallum at bmccallum@floridatoday.com. Follow @321preps on Twitter and Instagram. Be sure to subscribe to FLORIDA TODAY.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Brevard County high school football practice notes of August 4, 2022
