Last week, the Greene County football team traveled to Athens to participate in a 7-on-7 tournament hosted by the University of Georgia.
The event had more than 30 schools from all across the Southeast in attendance, and the Tigers took this opportunity to see how they competed against some of the best teams from Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina.
Second-year head coach Terrance Banks acknowledged it was a good experience for the players and the team improved because of it.
“I thought that, overall, we left UGA better than when we got there. Obviously there are some things that we still need to clean up, but we definitely got better,” Banks said. “I say this every time, but our goal is to get better every day and say we went 1-0. It’s fluctuated these past four weeks, but I think we’re starting to get more consistent.”
The event began with teams being broken into groups and having to compete in pool-play games in order to get seeded for the tournament part of the camp.
Greene County won two of its four pool play games before going into the single-elimination portion, where they were knocked out by Kennesaw Mountain.
Many schools in attendance were from bigger classifications, and Banks believes seeing that type of competition will really help prepare his players for the Class A Division II teams they will have to face during the regular season.
>>> Check out the full-length album of Greene County at the Kirby Smart 7-on-7 Camp
“Playing against bigger schools definitely helps us get better on the field. The analogy I always use with the boys is, it’s like you’re seven years old playing throw ‘em up tackle with your 12-year-old brothers. They’re bigger than you, but you want to play more, and the only way you’re going to play is competing with the big boys,” Banks said. “That’s why I like going to camps like UGA’s because we’re going to have to actually compete to get better.”
Over the next two weeks, Greene County will continue to have summer practices, as well as participate in a couple of padded camps and OTAs.
Banks acknowledged that individual skill levels have gone up as a result, and he would like to use the next few weeks of summer to work on the team’s chemistry.
“If we want to take that next step of becoming elite, we have to work on putting that team aspect together,” Banks said. “If you look at all of our boys this summer, we have guys who make great individual plays, but they’re still learning the strengths of each other and how to play off each other, and once we get that figured out, I think we’ll be good.”