Southeastern 7-on-7 Championship: Cats keep tourney hardware in town

Published 7:50 am Monday, July 16, 2012

For the Dalton Catamounts, falling into the consolation bracket of The Daily Citizen’s second annual Southeastern 7-on-7 Championship was something of a “mixed blessing” in head coach’s Matt Land assessment.

On the one hand, the competitive nature of the coach and his team are such that winning is the goal whenever score is being kept.

However, for a team that doesn’t live on its passing game, competing in the championship bracket of the tournament might have been a two-games-and-done proposition in Sunday’s double-elimination format.

“It was a blessing because it allowed us to play five more games today and compete in an environment that was going to allow us to get a lot of younger guys some quality play as well,” said Land after his team went undefeated to claim the consolation bracket title.

“Coming into this weekend, we said we wouldn’t allow anyone to define what success was going to be for us. Win or lose, we wanted to accomplish three things: The first was conditioning, the second was gaining experience for our younger guys, and the third was competition, which is the key component.”

Dalton rolled through the consolation tournament, beating Southeast Whitfield, Callaway, Northwest Whitfield, Bob Jones’ “B” team and Ringgold.

The Catamounts topped Ringgold 21-19 in the consolation championship to win the bracket trophy.

Another added bonus for the Cats was in the fact that because of Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association rules, McMinn County couldn’t compete on the second day of the tournament. Instead, Dalton inserted its own “B” team into the tournament, giving some of the  Cats’ younger players an opportunity for more time on the field. The “B” team lost both of its games, falling 23-20 to Southeast and 20-14 to Callaway.

“I feel very good overall about our football team,” Land said.

Northwest, Southeast, Christian Heritage and Coahulla Creek joined the Catamounts and 11 other teams in the consolation games at the Mack Gaston Community Center and the Broaddus-Durkan Soccer Complex on Sunday.

Coach Josh Robinson’s Northwest Bruins were 2-2 on the day, beating Kentucky’s Murray 17-7 before falling 25-15 to the Cats to fall into the loser’s bracket. Northwest took a 13-0 win over cross-county rival Southeast before seeing its tournament run come to an end in a 16-13 loss to Ringgold.

“Our routes got better, and our coverages got better, and our defenders made some good adjustments on the fly,” Robinson said. “That is some good progress on our part, and that was really what we were looking for. We are disappointed that we didn’t win more games, but at the same time, at this time of the year it is about getting better.”

Offensively, the Bruins are in the midst of a learning curve — the team lost all of its skill starters on that side of the ball to graduation, and former Southeast head coach David Crane joined the offensive coaching staff for the Bruins this spring. So, Robinson wasn’t surprised the offense had some challenges.

“Our defense is ahead of our offense, and it should be,” Robinson said. “We have three of our four starters back in the secondary and a solid corps of linebackers coming back that have been in our 4-3 defensive scheme for a while now, and it shows.

“Offensively, it is a maturation process, but we are farther along than we were at this time last year. All I am looking for right now is improvement week to week and day to day. So far, I have been satisfied with our progress.”

For Dalton, the run to the title in the consolation tourney was the combination of senior quarterback Cole Calfee working well with his receivers and a defensive secondary that seemed to get stronger as the day went on.

With some major holes in that secondary after graduation this spring, Land was especially pleased with the progress shown.

“Some questions were answered, and some young guys have stepped up and are doing things that are going to force us coaches to put them on the field,” Land said. “That is one of the great things about playing so much in these past two days, is that some people have responded to the competition and did a great job.”

While Dalton’s success on the second day of the tournament is a boost for the offense, Calfee said he and his teammates have no illusions about the Cats turning into a run-and-shoot team or heading to a full spread offense.

“Although we are a run-first mentality team, we had to have that second dynamic, and this is the chance for us to really work on that,” Calfee said. “We know that when we get the pads on and go off to camp there won’t be a lot of passing. There will be a lot hard-hitting, running straight up the gut-work being done.”