Nixon-Smiley overwhelms Cardinals in scrimmage

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NIXON — The annual scrimmage between the Nixon-Smiley Mustangs and Shiner St. Paul Cardinals ended with coaches on the Nixon-Smiley side feeling accomplished and coaches on the Cardinals’ side feeling like a lot of work needed to be done.

Though just a scrimmage, the Mustangs played well on both sides of the field, which impressed head coach Carlton McKinney because he understands how well coached Jake Wachsmuth’s Cardinals are.

“I enjoy scrimmaging Shiner St. Paul to start the year off is because coach does a great job of keeping them as discipline as possible,” McKinney explained. “Regardless of their level of talent, they are always going to do things the right way, they are going to play hard and they are going to be discipline.”

One key change that may have affected the Mustangs positively this year is the simplification of their defense.

“What we’ve done for this year in particular is our defensive coordinator has taken out a lot of the thought process for our defense where they’re just aggressive,” McKinney said.

Simply put, the coaching staff have given their athletes a “simple read and a simple gap responsibility,” as McKinney explained it, which allowed the Mustangs to become more aggressive than they have in the past.

“The kids [were] getting caught up and weren’t very aggressive [in the past],” he said, “and I thought today they were aggressive.”

Meanwhile, the Cardinals knew coming into this season that they’d have to strength their offensive and defensive lines and their struggles showed on the offensive side of the field.

“We missed too many assignments and we really didn’t fire out like we needed to,” Wachsmuth noted. “We didn’t execute very well. On defense if one person makes a mistake sometimes you can fill in. offense, if one person makes a mistake it can blow the whole play up, so that’s kind of why it looked the way it did.”

Wachsmuth did give credit to his defense, noting that they were overall better than the offense.

“Honestly, we got a long way to go,” he said. “We just got guys that are going to have to step into some spots. I believe that it’s not going to happen all of a sudden, we probably had some mistakes that we shouldn’t have, but it might be a good thing. Sometimes you need to kind of know exactly where you stand and we got a lot of work to do. I think that we have the opportunity to be pretty good but it’s not just going to happen.”

Mustangs quarterback Colby Newman found Devin Hester deep for a long touchdown. Later, the Mustangs intercepted a ball that had it been a live game, may have gone back for another score.

McKinney named athletes like Newman, Joey Mendez and Jason Yell who played well Saturday. But he also noted that there were many players that did their part.

“I think the positive for us is we have a lot of the second tier kids that are just now getting the experience that are starting to play well,” he said. “And once they get comfortable and start playing with some confidence, I’m really excited about our possibilities moving forward.”

Though Nixon-Smiley had a successful scrimmage, McKinney understands that there is still work that needs to be done for this season.

As for Shiner St. Paul, Wachsmuth believes the team needs to continue to grow to make this season something special.

“I think we just have to grow as a team, maybe develop a little bit better mentality,” he explained. “We have some starters last year that would rotate in meaningful moments. But rotating in and actually being a full-time starter are different mindsets. We just got to become a tougher team. Obviously a lot of mistakes but I think I’m more interested in our physicality and just our mental approach to the game.”

Nixon-Smiley travels next to Randolph for a scrimmage this Friday, Aug. 19 at 6 p.m. Shiner St. Paul will play at Bloomington for a scrimmage on Thursday, Aug. 18 at 5 p.m.

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