MOUNT CARMEL, Ill. – Mount Carmel’s annual pre-season football scrimmage – the Gator Bowl – is usually about the players, their readiness, and position posturing for the season ahead.
This year, it was more about the coaches.
For this year, for the first time since 2001, there was a change of head coaches. Along with Michael Brewers’ ascension to the top came changes to his staff. That made Thursday’s annual scrimmage a dress rehearsal for players and coaches.
“It’s a pretty big adjustment,” said Brewer after the one-hour varsity scrimmage to close out the program at Riverview Stadium. Last year, his sixth as an assistant to Darren Peach, Brewer was up in the booth with headphones on. “I wasn’t calling the plays. Darren was.”
All things considered, he said the Gator Bowl was “probably better for me than anyone else, to come out here, get everybody organized, see where we know where to go, and call some plays. I was happy with the communication among our coaches. A couple of times we didn’t get the right guys on the field. So that gives us something we need to work on before next Friday (the season opener against Harrisburg).”
MOUNT CARMEL, Ill. – The boy’s golf team at Mount Carmel High School is a veteran team, with four seniors leading the way. Meanwhile, the Lady Aces team is devoid of seniors, relying on freshmen and sophomores for leadership.
On Thursday, at the season-opening Mount Carmel Invitational, it didn’t matter. Both Aces teams finished at the top of the standings in their respective divisions.
Boys coach John White, beginning his 12th year at the helm, was dutifully impressed with his team’s cumulative round of 309. So much so that if they turn that score again in two months at the sectional tournament, that score may land them a berth in the Class 1A state tournament.
MOUNT CARMEL, Ill. – The last time the grandest football program in southern Illinois changed its’ head coach, in 2001, Michael Brewer was a junior at Mount Carmel High School.
Sixteen years later, it is now Brewer who is in charge at his alma mater, succeeding Darren Peach, who resigned last year after the winningest tenure in school history.
Monday was Day One of the Brewer Era, and nothing looked out of the ordinary, save for one nod to the modern athlete, a speaker sitting on the sideline gently pumping out beats in the background during practice. Brewer, who takes the reigns after six years as an assistant, has made other changes as well.
“We’ve done things here and there a little bit different, but outside of that we don’t want to mess up a good thing,” said Brewer after the first official day, which consisted of two workouts, wrapping up at dusk on the practice field next to Riverview Stadium, where the Aces debut on August 25th against Harrisburg.
MOUNT CARMEL, Ill. -- The two seniors on the Mount Carmel girls’ basketball team will forever be credited with returning the Lady Aces to the north side of the .500 mark for the first time since Tyra Buss played at the Hilltop.
Kylie Terrel and McKenna Zimmerman will also get credit for setting the table for the surge that is surely ahead. Because just as much as the awards banquet held last week was about them, it was also about the future, which looks extremely bright, by the way.
LUBBOCK, Tex. --- Twice in the third quarter of Monday night’s NJCAA women’s national tournament basketball game, it appeared as if Wabash Valley was about to reverse its fortune against lower-seeded Cochise, Arizona.
The Apaches, however, had an answer to each challenge, eventually pulling away to a surprisingly-easy 96-75 victory in the final game of the first day of play in the 24-team tourney being played at Rip Griffin Center on the campus of Lubbock Christian University.
