On the gridiron: Eagles close out spring practice
Published 7:34 pm Tuesday, May 14, 2019
- The Goshen Eagles wrap up spring practice this week at Eagles Stadium. The Eagles will practice for the fifteenth and final time on Wednesday before playing in the Spring Classic at Veterans Memorial Stadium on Thursday afternoon.
The Goshen Eagles hope to take another step forward after a successful spring camp.
The Goshen Eagles finished last season in the postseason, but according to head coach Bart Snyder, they didn’t reach their goals that were set in the offseason. This spring, they got back to work in hopes of taking another step forward heading into the summer.
“It’s going good. When you’re limited on days and you have a lot of other activities going on it’s kind of hard,” Snyder said. “We have good kids that have worked hard. They want to improve on what we did last year.”
The Eagles finished last season 4-7 overall and advanced to the postseason before being knocked out by Cottage Hill in the opening round. The Eagles feel they have a lot of room for growth and improvement.
“We didn’t meet our goals,” Snyder said. “We made the playoffs, but making the playoffs just isn’t good enough for us.”
One area they concentrated on this spring was cutting down on the unnecessary penalties and turnovers, something that plagued the Eagles last season.
“We are working on that extremely hard,” Snyder said. “That’s one of the things that we are going to fix. Good ball teams should not make those mistakes and that is what we did this past year. That is what we worked on eliminating. We are not going to do that.”
The Eagles went into last year tasked with replacing key seniors including Brock Snyder, Damion Passmore, Zach Alford and many more. This season they welcome back key playmakers including quarter Bryan Galloway, but they also say goodbye to talented players.
“We’ve gotten some great leadership out of Galloway, who is returning as is Dakarai Pelton, RaQuan Martin and others,” Snyder said. “They (seniors) are going to help us develop and become a better ball team for their senior year.”
The Eagles have always looked to their seniors for leadership and this class is no different.
“You have to have senior leadership,” Snyder said. “Every program relies and counts on the senior group to make their program successful. They are leaders and they should experience the success. They want to lead to leave a legacy that teams that follow are going to have to meet.”
The Eagles will close out spring practice on Thursday when they take on Geneva County in the Troy Cable Spring Classic at Veterans Memorial Stadium.
“We are going to have an evaluation of our athletes,” Snyder said. “We are going to have varsity and junior varsity get in the game as well. First, second and third teams will participate.”
Snyder hopes to build momentum heading into the summer months.
“It’s a confidence-builder,” Snyder said. “It’s an opportunity to evaluate where you are standing and what you need to correct and build on over the summer.”
Kickoff between the Eagles and Geneva County is scheduled for 3 p.m.