By Craig Holamon
sports@mineralwellsindex.com
SANTO — Second-season Santo High School head football coach Randy Thornton knows what it takes to win, after all he learned the tricks of the trade from a Texas high school coaching legend.
In short — a new era of football is fixing to begin at Santo High School.
Former Wildcats head coach and present-day Santo athletic director Jackie Stephens hired new Wildcats head football coach in Randy Thornton a year ago.
Thornton, a former Springtown and Midlothian High School assistant football coach is also a former Stephenville High School Yellow Jackets football star, who played his high school for incoming Baylor University head football coach Art Briles.
Briles, who left Stephenville and worked as an assistant coach at Texas Tech University and then became the head coach at the University of Houston, is generally credited as a pioneer of the run-and-shoot offense that’s currently commonplace in high school and college football circles.
Thornton's first team of Santo Wildcats picked up just one win last fall but after a strong off-season program, the Santo coach is optimistic.
“It went pretty well,” Thornton said of the team’s off-season program. “We got a lot of work done but we’ve still got a way to go.”
Thornton said physical strength, mental toughness and conditioning will be his team’s mainstays.
“That’s what our staple is going to be. Our kids worked hard during the off-season program. They did a real good job,” Thornton said on Friday as he drove home from a coaching clinic at Angelo State University. “It was a good clinic, we learned quite a few new things.”
Thornton said his team needs to get physically and mentally stronger.
“We want to be mentally tough and physically strong,’ Thornton said. “Right now, we’re way ahead of where we were at this time last year.”
Indeed.
In 2007, his Wildcats didn’t have a chance to participate in Thornton’s off-season program because he joined the school’s coaching staff late in the school year.
“The kids know what I expect from them now and now I know what to expect from them,” Thornton said. “I feel like we have a better foundation to work from.”
Thornton said he had about 26 freshmen, sophomores and juniors on his team during his off-season program.
“They all worked hard in the off-season. I feel like we’re going to be better up front in the line next year,” the Santo coach predicted. “Right now, we’re a work in progress. We’re not any where close to where we want to be and where we need to be.”
The Santo head football coach said his team spent a lot of time in the weightroom during the off-season and will spend a lot more time there this summer.
“The kids did good jobs in the weightroom during the off-season, they all got stronger,” the Santo coach said. “The weightroom will be open all summer, the kids all have a summer plan for the conditioning program.”
The weightroom will be a big part of what we plan to do during our two-a-day workouts,” Thornton said. “We believe in strength and conditioning training.”
The Santo High School football-coach said he expects another 15 or 16 incoming freshmen to join his team when two a-days start during the first week of Aug.
Thornton said building a consistent program won’t happen overnight.
“It’s going to take time to built the kind of team we want to have. We don’t want to have a team that has one winning year and then drops off. We want to build a team that will be a consistent winner,” the Wildcats coach said.
Local Sports
Solid off-season program gives Wildcats a lift
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Santo JH seventh-grade girls win district
Santo Junior High seventh-grade girls put together runs of 13-3 and 10-0 on its way to a 31-7 win over Cross Plains here Monday night as the Ladycats raised their district record to 10-0 (13-0 overall) to clinch the district championship.
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Biren Clardy scored 14 points, Ty Ashley added 12 and Chris Valdez finished with 11 to lead the Mineral Wells Rams junior varsity to a 55-50 win over Bridgeport in a District 7-3A game Tuesday at the MWHS gym.
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