SAPULPA – On paper, it may seem like they were a little out of their league, but the Kellyville football team hasn’t looked at all out of place in 7-on-7 practices/scrimmages against higher-level competition this summer.
As the Class 2A Ponies adjust to a new head coach, former Sapulpa strength and conditioning coach Ken Zachary, the weekly 7-on-7 sessions against 5A teams Sapulpa, Bishop Kelley and Collinsville, taking place at George F. Collins Stadium in Sapulpa, have proven to be extremely valuable.
“Overall, we’ve actually been doing pretty good,” Zachary said after the last session on Tuesday, June 27. “They’ve held their own, we’re 2A going against 5A and we’ve been actually doing pretty good for the most part.
The idea is to have the Ponies, who went 3-7 last year and missed the 2A playoffs, improve by playing against tougher competition, and all of the teams they faced in the 7-on-7 made the 5A playoffs. So far, that strategy has been working.
“That was my planning,” said Zachary, the former Sapulpa and Oklahoma State standout in both football and track who went on to play pro football in both the CFL and NFL. “We had a chance to go to some other places, and of course, this is my old stomping grounds, so when they called and said the lower class teams are going to go against each other, I said, ‘No, I want to go against everybody,’ because competition is where you get better. Each week, we’ve actually improved. We had kind of a bad day today, dropping some balls that we could have had, but those are things that we can fix. It was all kind of mental mistakes, so I’m still proud of them.”
Meanwhile, the team has been adapting well to Zachary and vice versa as he gets used to his new players.
“I’m feeling great, the kids from the very beginning have accepted me coming in and this summer, from spring ball to summer, we got the kids showing up and doing their best for me,” Zachary said. “I think this is probably one of the best summers that they’ve had, because we’ve had the seventh grade through seniors working together. That’s something they’ve never had before, and we had a successful showing at the youth camp, something they’ve never had before. So I’m bringing a lot of firsts here at Kellyville, but the kids are doing awesome.”
The idea of including the middle school kids with the varsity team during summer workouts is one that Zachary believes will pay off in the future, as the upcoming players learn the high school system now and bond with their future teammates.
“That’s what I wanted to do,” Zachary said. “When they become high school players, they’ll already know what to do, so it’ll be a good transition for them.”
And even though the Ponies are coming off a somewhat down year and lost a lot of players off the 2022 team, Zachary is optimistic about the upcoming season.
“We’re very young,” Zachary said. “I think this year, we’ll have three seniors and last year, I think we had 14, so we’re replacing a lot. Coming into this year, we’ll be younger, but we’ll be stronger than we were last year. That right there is a big plus. We’re going to take a few bruises, but I think we’re going to surprise a few people because of how strong they’re going to be.”
Zachary is excited about the team’s offensive line and singled out receiver Jayvius Holmes as a player that has made impressive strides during these summer practices. Wyatt Briggs, a sophomore, will likely be the starting quarterback.
“We’ve got Jayvius Holmes, he’s going to be pretty special,” Zachary said. “He actually played a little bit for us last year as a freshman, he’s going to be special. Our whole secondary is going to be either freshmen or sophomores, and our offensive line is going to be bigger than we were last year and they’re going to be a lot stronger than we were last year, so we have made the offense to go around our strongest group, which is our linemen, and we’ve just got to put those special players in place.
“We’re definitely going to be all right.”
