Morning football practices disappearing in Brevard because of rules, rain and coaches' jobs
Chasite BanksOn Monday, high school football teams in Brevard county took the field for the first official week of practice.
The majority of the teams in the county opted to start practices in the afternoon, with Rockledge being the only team to start its practice in the morning.
Rockledge head coach Wayne Younger said the Raiders mainly stuck with morning practice for the first week for the sake of consistency and will go to afternoon practice once school starts.
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"Try to really get away from the chances of rain and other things that may come up in the afternoon and we kind of like to stick to our schedule of our offseason conditioning program," Younger said. "I've got a good coaching staff and fortunate that their jobs allow these guys to come out and coach our guys up in the morning, so I mean really it's just because of rain and other things that may pop up in the afternoon."
But outside of Rockledge, every other team in the county has moved away from the traditional morning practices for the first week.
The FHSAA limited two-a-day practices in a June 2012 vote that made it illegal for the first week of official practices. Beginning the second week, the new rule limited it to only every other day, and it further limited the total time spent on football in a day to 3.5 hours, including weight training and other conditioning.
That essentially ended two-a-days, because the first week is often the only full week of practice before classes begin.
"It’s a preference thing for each coach, of course. I take teaching very seriously," said Cocoa Beach head coach Ben Waldrop said. "I’m part of the team out here (on the practice field), but I’m also part of the team in that building. I don’t want to try to get out of meetings. I like to be in there building relationships with the staff and get total support, so I don’t schedule in the morning, just so I can be at everything.
"You’re going to have a majority (where) at least half the staff are community coaches. When you practice in the morning, now, you’re half-staffed, so there’s a catch-22 there."
Melbourne head coach David Kintigh mentioned a similar reasoning as to why his team started their first week of practices in the afternoon.
"If you're a teacher in the building we have professional developments and meetings we have to do during the day," Kintigh said. "I do have a number of contract coaches that also work but the reality of it is because we have to do meetings in the school to get ready for the school year, afternoon practices are almost the only way to go."
Throughout the summer Melbourne Central Catholic head coach Rich Pruzinsky and the Hustlers would hold their workouts in the morning.
For the first official week of practice though, they got start in the afternoon in order to help the team better prepare for the season.
"We play in the evening, so at the end of the day we're going to try to put them in game like situations in all that we do," Pruzinsky said. "In summer we were all morning but now that we're in fall camp we get as close to game time as we can and really acclimating them, that's what the period is for."
In 2016, the FHSAA added more rules limiting practices, much of it involving contact. The new legislation prohibited contact on consecutive days and limited it to just one session on any day with two practices.
Based on the FHSAA website, teams can being contact in practice on Aug 8.
FLORIDA TODAY's Brian McCallum contributed to this report.