COFFEETOWN HS SPORTS

Coffeetown starts its state football title defense with the first of 10 spring practice sessions this week.

The only problem is that a different bunch of copperheads currently defend the team’s only bag of footballs.

“This does happen from time to time. It just got more difficult now ever since the county stopped letting me bring my ninja stars to campus,” head coach Cliff Swansea told me over the phone a couple of days ago.

Swansea showed up to work on spring practice planning with his state championship coaching staff early one morning over spring break.

When Swansea opened up the Coffeetown football equipment closet,

he and the Coffeetown staff found that a mess of copperhead snakes overtook the giant mesh bag of leather footballs.

“I’m lucky I wasn’t wearing white pants, I will tell you that,” Swansea told me.

“But we will still have practice. You don’t need an actual football to play football. Think back on all of the sports you played when you were a kid. If you didn’t have a ball, what did you do? You played with whatever you had lying around. We aren’t resting on any laurels with this practice. We owe it to the community to show them what we’re all about,” Swansea said.

“We invite all families to come watch practices totally for free if they want to see what championship practices look like. But mom and dads should bring a lot of water if you don’t want to call an ambulance to get them or grandma and grandpa carted off.

It’s supposed to be hot enough to choke a maggot this week, and I don’t want ’em gettin’ sick. We hardly give water to our own boys, let alone your van full of snot-lipped second graders. Show up or don’t, I really don’t give a crap, ok?”

We don’t know what the players will use as a football just yet

“I don’t care, I’ll still knock the piss out of anyone who runs my way,” starting linebacker Reginald Grecko said.

“Whether there’s a ball or not, I am not losing the opportunity to battle,” Grecko said.

Grecko will have his first chance to start after backing up Middle Tennessee State signee Nacho Davis for the last several seaons.

Quarterbacks and kickers are not so amped.

Coffeetown backup quarterback and starting punter and kicker, Master Spoolwick, paints the picture for us.

“Coach told me, ‘Why couldn’t I just throw some baseballs and kick around volleyballs instead,” Spoolwick said.

“I didn’t have the heart to argue with him so I’ve been working on five-yard out routes with the baseball team’s old scuffed up balls. I got an under-inflated volleyball from my girlfriend who plays on the team. It definitely isn’t what I’m used to. My kicking foot looks like it was stung by hundreds of bees.”

There’s no perfect situation for this bunch of Copperheads

Until the snakes clear out of the field house locker room, Coffeetown will continue to have a quarterback with a busted foot and running backs literally running the rock.

“One of our assistant coaches handed me this piece of quartz from his wife’s home furniture and design store,” Coffeetown football running back Slug Gentry said.

Yes, Gentry had to run through preliminary workouts on Friday with an eight-pound chunk of countertop.

But if you know Coffeetown football, then you know there is a culture of selflessness here that makes people do unnatural things.

It even has Coach Swansea thinking about his own motivations.

“If I don’t go in to that snake pit myself with my bare hands – ninja stars or not – how bad do I really want to win for these boys this season? What does my failure to act show them?” Coach pondered late Sunday evening.

Swansea plans to storm the equipment shed Monday afternoon right before practice starts.

The Copperhead Courier will update more as this story develops.