Highland Bulldogs football begins to wind down fall workouts ahead of 2021 season

This was a week that was supposed to be spent in game preparation for a first round opponent in the IHSA football playoffs for Highland coach Jimmy Warnecke and his Bulldogs.

Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, that preparation has been moved into mid-February of 2021.

As of Wednesday, the Bulldogs were amid more offseason conditioning. It has been a long and at times repetitive process of trying to learn and get better for Warnecke’s Bulldogs over the past nine weeks since the IHSA in August moved football from fall until spring.

“This would have been the first week of playoffs and when one of my assistant coaches asked me how it felt to not be preparing for a game this week, the first thing that comes to mind is that I can’t believe that we’ve been practicing this long,” Warnecke said.

The regular process over the past two-plus months for Highland has been practice, fix mistakes, and watch film — and repeat that cycle each week.

Over the past few weeks, the Bulldogs have focused on the offense’s passing game during on field workouts. Highland sophomore quarterback Brent Wuebbels has been trying to build a rapport with a young group of Bulldogs receivers working through various passing routes in practice.

“We’ve really been working on our pass game,” Warnecke said. “That’s where our youth is at quarterback with Brent just being a sophomore and a returner and the same with our wide receiving core. We’ve got two seniors in Reid Thole and Shelton Black, but the rest of our wide receiving core is really young. We’re just trying to get timing together there with those guys and that’s something we can do at moderate to low risk.”

The other on field focus the Bulldogs have locked in on is gaining proper technique for blocking, tackling, and lining up for plays at the line of scrimmage.

“You can never do enough technique (work),” Warnecke said. “You see the pros every day work on it and we complicate this game sometimes as coaches ... it is (just) blocking and tackling generally, and the team that wins is better at both. We teach them technique from the ground up. It starts with your feet.’

Due to current COVID-19 restrictions, the Bulldogs are limited to using only hand shields in practice with no live contact allowed in pads.

HHS players deal with COVID-19 obstacles

Like other teams at Highland, the Bulldogs gridders have had to deal with the challenges of the pandemic including the early September outbreak at school which affected some of the Bulldogs freshman and sophomore classes with infection.

“For our younger classes, (COVID-19) hurt us a little bit more with our freshmen, sophomores and even right now I think we’ve got two kids out but it’s all been quarantine (cases) and we’ve never had any positive cases, so it’s all been contact tracing,” Warnecke said. “We’ve been getting through it and we’ve been treating it like injuries. Has it been ideal? No, but we’ve been getting through it.”

The most challenging part of the extended offseason for Warnecke, the staff, and players has been the seemingly no end in sight of training with the start of regular season games still a good four-and-a-half months away.

“There’s no endpoint (to it),” Warnecke said. “We just know we’re playing and we hope it’s March 5. (that we start playing).”

What’s next for Highland football team?

The Bulldogs had their final practice Oct. 29. Then, starting next week, Warnecke is giving the team a four week break from workouts through Thanksgiving, including weight lifting.

After Thanksgiving, the Bulldogs will resume power training in the weight room and then in January the team will participate in chalk talk and film sessions to review the past work put in during the summer and fall in preparation for the start of the season in February.

“In January we’re looking to get some chalk talk (done) and some film room sessions just to kind of refresh what we’ve been doing since June and then hit the ground running in February,” Warnecke said.

This story was originally published October 29, 2020 at 1:16 AM.