There are still a couple of months before the start of the high school football season, but that doesn’t mean that the members of the Carbon football team have been taking any time off. With different workouts and camps going on the offseason has been pretty busy for the players and first-year head coach Braydon Rushton and his coaching staff.
Rushton was selected back in December to lead the blue and white this season after the resignation of Phil Howa at the end of the 2023 season. Rushton has been an assistant coach for five years, most recently as a defensive analyst for the Payson High School football program.
Rushton was a guest recently on KOAL’s Drive Time Sports where they covered several topics from the offseason to building the team’s chemistry.
“So our big push has been getting kids in the weight room and getting kids excited to come out and play football, we’ve done quite a bit of stuff to help push that and drive us towards that. We’ve got camp scheduled as a team so that we can go out and spend some time together and get to know each other. We’ve done some barbeques as a team, spent time together, and really bond as a unit and help prepare us for a successful season.”
Another thing that he talked about was the commitment of the student-athletes who are sometimes pulled into multiple directions when it comes to high school sports.
“We are super excited about the level of commitment we’ve seen. We’ve pushed a lot of our kids towards multi-sport athletes, so we’ve had a lot of kids out in track and baseball and soccer and so we are super excited for all the success that they’ve had in those areas as well, and those that didn’t participate in those sports they were coming out hard and they were hitting the weight room. And once those spring sports wrapped up we’ve seen an increase in commitment from those athletes who were in those sports, so we’re super pleased with the effort and commitment they’ve shown.”
With their first game coming up in early August, the team camp begins this week in Colorado, and then various seven-on-seven camps throughout the remainder of the summer.
“It’s kind of two-fold (going to the camp), one if we’re talking x’s and o’s, I want to see our kids go out and at least get some of our fundamental plays down and understood, so that way we have a base to build on as we start nearing our season, and then, on the other hand, I want to see a lot more bonding going on with our team I want to see them kind of take this opportunity to come together, it’s one of those camps that you only get to go to four times in your playing career and I want them to come together and really forge that brotherhood that is so common to see in football and athletics.”
He then took time to discuss the seven-on-seven camps.
“Seven-on-seven is a great opportunity on offense for our quarterbacks and receivers to really get their routes down, the timing, and the mechanics down, and to really connect one with the other, and then defensively it really helps out our secondary guys to understand where their drops are, where they need to get to, what switching or handing off guys and routes and in coverage will look like so those two things are really good for the different sides of the ball, but then also just going out there and competing is always good for these kids.”
Keep an eye out for the release of the full Carbon football schedule in the coming weeks on castlecountryradio.com.
You can access the entire interview with Coach Rushton by using the player below: