By Kim Staudinger
Havre football coach Troy Purcell says even though his team is not quite ready for this weekend's game against Whitefish, the Blue and White scrimmage on Friday proved his team will be tough during the regular season.
"It was a very positive practice that was up to game speed," he said. "The kids now know what game speed is like, how hard they will have to play and how in shape we still need to be."
Purcell said the teams were divided up as evenly as possible, which allowed all 62 kids to play.
"Danny Wirtzberger played pretty well," Purcell said. "He showed his quickness and his ability real well. K.P. Fisher, who hasn't played football for a while, stepped up and also played real well at linebacker.
"(Kevin) Harada played real tough and Stevie Heberly was catching the ball well, too. I have to be very happy with how things went," he said.
Purcell also announced that Wirtzberger, Harada, Levi Briese and Kyle Sheppard were voted as team captains for the year.
Basketball coach Dennis Murphy said his scrimmage "fulfilled what we needed it to fulfill" and he and his coaches were happy with the way the girls played, even though they did seem a little tired.
"We were pretty tired physically due to the two a day practices and the hot weather," he said. "But it wasn't sloppy and we ran the floor pretty well, even though we were tired."
Murphy said that when you are playing yourself, the coaches tend to notice weaknesses more, but that one team's weakness means the other team is doing something right.
"We rebounded well offensively," he said. "We found the open man and our vision of the court was pretty good.
"We had some very good individual efforts, which made us feel pretty good. We are just working on getting up to game speed."
The basketball team travels to Livingston on Friday for the Tip-Off Tournament. The girls will play Dillon at 3:30 p.m. on Friday and Butte Central at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday.
