Nenaber’s Rams ready to buckle chin straps for preseason practice

The waiting is over for first-year head coach Cory Nenaber and his Maricopa High School football team.

Beginning with Monday’s initial full-squad workout, the Rams will hit the practice field for four weeks of training camp in preparation for a 10-game regular-season schedule which commences with the Sept. 3 opener at Buckeye.

“We’ve been lifting and conditioning,” Nenaber said last week as he prepared to distribute helmets and equipment to the team’s seniors. “I think the players and coaches are ready to get practice started on Monday.”

The Rams have spent the summer lifting weights three times a week and undergoing plyometric, speed and agility training on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Players have participated in 7-on-7 passing league competition, and Nenaber also took 42 team members to the cooler climate of Snowflake for the Champion Mountain Football Camp.

“The camp (in Snowflake) was kind of like a team-building kickoff to the season,” Nenaber said.

The four-day excursion to the White Mountains, along with the summer-long weightlifting and conditioning sessions, have helped to establish a foundation for the 2010 Maricopa squad. The next step for Nenaber and his coaching staff is to lead the players through an intense and detail-oriented training camp, in an effort to construct the framework for what they hope will be a season of improvement.

“We’re trying to build something new here and get some excitement,” Nenaber said.

The Rams, who are beginning their second season as a member of the rugged Class 4A-II East Sky Region, are aiming to improve upon last year’s 2-8 record as they work to create a winning tradition.

“We have a good core nucleus of six or seven starters on each side of the ball coming back,” Nenaber said. “The senior class has a core group of about 20 that I’m really leaning on to be the leaders of the football team, who have been through the fire a little bit, who understand what’s coming up. I think we’re going to be pretty competitive. I think there is a good core group that we’re going to lean on for leadership and to push our football program in the right direction.”

Nenaber comes to Maricopa from Tempe Corona del Sol High School, where he played football in the mid-1990s and then served for a decade as an assistant on the staff of longtime former head coach Gary Venturo.

“I coached football there for 10 years, in lots of different capacities, on lots of different levels,” Nenaber said about his tenure at Corona del Sol. “It was a good learning experience. I learned under a great man in Gary Venturo, who taught me how to coach the right way, in that we’re trying to build good, quality citizens and teach life lessons through the game of football.”

Nenaber wants his players to be known as good guys off the field and as hard-nosed, physical competitors on game nights.

“I want them to be thought of as really good contributing members of society, that they are gentlemen, that they are quality young men,” Nenaber said. “I really preach being student-athletes – and grades are No. 1 in our program – and that off the field they are nice guys, they’re helpful, they’re respectful and they do all the things that they’re supposed to do.

“But then between the lines, we are the toughest football team that anybody is going to have to play. We want to develop a situation and atmosphere down here where other teams hate coming down to Maricopa to have to play the Rams – that they know they’re in for a war and they’re going to get hit and we’re never going to quit and we’re going to do everything we can to win the football game.”

Nenaber, who will serve as his own offensive coordinator and will call the plays from the sidelines, believes that a high school coach needs to implement a system that maximizes the strengths of his players, as opposed to making the players adapt to a particular scheme.

“Our system has to fit our kids,” the coach said. “I believe in a multi-formation offense. I try to make the (opposing) defense line up in a lot of different ways, but at the same time keep it really simple for our guys. And then on defense, I’m a big believer in, ‘Keep it simple and let our athletes fly around and make plays.’

“We’ve got some really athletic kids here,” Nenaber added. “We try to let that athletic ability come out and let them fly around and make plays and, especially on defense, rally to the football.”

Nenaber plans to utilize his team’s athleticism on offense to create scoring opportunities.

“We’re going to be pretty fast,” he said. “I think we have some really good skill guys. We’re not huge up front (on the line), but we’re going to try to get those guys on angles and take advantage of our speed.”

Nenaber will rely heavily upon a quartet of seniors who figure to be at the forefront of the Rams’ cadre of potential playmakers.

“Patrick Davis has done a great job at quarterback for us all summer,” Nenaber said. “He has been here every day. He has really stepped in and taken control of the offense. K.J. Diehl is going to be a really good corner as well as a wide receiver. Brian Nechamkin is going to be a workhorse for us at running back. Travis Brown is a really talented athlete who I think is going to help us in a lot of different ways.”

One of the main objectives for the upcoming training camp will be to establish an unwavering attention to detail that the coaches hope will carry over into the regular season.

“We’re going to do the little things right,” Nenaber said. “We’re going to block and we’re going to tackle. It doesn’t matter how you line up. It doesn’t matter what play is called. If you block or you tackle, if you take care of the football, don’t turn the ball over and don’t give the other team extra chances, you’re going to put yourself in a position to win every week.”

The Rams will practice at 3 p.m. Monday through Friday this week and also will take the field for a 6 a.m. workout on Saturday. Next week’s schedule includes a 6 p.m. scrimmage at Carl Hayden High School on Aug. 19. A week later, on Aug. 26, the Rams will line up for their annual Red-Black Soda Scrimmage at the Maricopa High School stadium.

The regular season begins with three road games (at Buckeye on Sept. 3, at Buckeye Youngker on Sept. 10 and at Page on Sept. 17). The Rams’ home opener will take place on Sept. 24, when Gilbert Higley makes the trip to Maricopa.

Photo by Tom Kessler