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Morristown East and Grainger met up at Grainger High School on Thursday for 7-on-7 action, along with Seymour High School.

Both teams have had their hands full this offseason, with lots of turnover all over the field. 7-on-7 work is particularly important to both teams this season, as they each graduated their starting quarterbacks from last year.

“It was a lot of good work for us today, getting a look against someone other than yourself is always good, that competition aspect, and that’s where we’re still trying to grow,” said Morristown East head coach Dallas Kuykendall. “We’re still trying to learn how to compete, be more consistent with what we’re trying to do both offensively and defensively and I think our kids are trying to do that.”

Kuykendall is approaching his first season at East. Football coaches can often be met with doubt, especially new faces, but that hasn’t been Kuykendall’s experience thus far.

“It’s been awesome, the community and the administration have been really supportive of what we’re trying to do,” said Kuykendall. “The kids have been great, I think they’re starting to buy into what we’re trying to do, so it’s been a really good transition as a whole.”

This season is going to be a bit of a fresh start for East. With a new running back, new quarterback and new pieces all around the field, a new head coach could be better equipped to deal with that kind of roster overhaul.

“Luckily for me I wasn’t here last year so I didn’t really know what we had to replace, I just know what’s on the team right,” said Kuykendall. “Those kids have done a great job. We’ve come leaps and bounds from the springtime. I had a lot of sleepless nights early in spring, but we’re starting to get there, and we’re trending in the right direction as the season approaches, which is always nice to see. The best thing about it is that these kids are putting in the work outside of practice on their own and we’re starting to reap the rewards of that.”

The summer is when you start to identify who your key pieces for the upcoming season will be. Kuykendall had a few names in mind.

“Caleb Billings is looking really good at quarterback right now. Developing, learning the game,” he said.

The scrimmage went a lot like the offseason as a whole goes for any new quarterback. It took a few series for Billings and his receivers to get each others’ timings and tendencies down, but towards the end they began to hit their stride.

Kuykendall went on to list more names.

“In the backend, Austin Brannan is doing a great job of getting us lined up. He’s played a lot of football so he knows how to get everybody ready. Our two corners, Will (Hemminger) and RJ (Lawson) have done a great job,” he said. “We’re older on the defensive side, so you kind of expect that. We’re still going through the growing pains offensively, but I expect those guys to get caught up as well.”

Kuykendall’s main hope for this season is that his players compete like he’s been preaching all offseason.

“Our expectation is that we go out there and compete every single week,” Kuykendall said. “You know, 6A is not an easy division. There are no easy games on our schedule, so we just have to put our kids in the best positions to be successful and go out there and compete.”

Meanwhile, Grainger entered the day hoping to build off their scrimmage against Jeff County earlier this week.

“We felt like we improved a little bit from Tuesday,” said Grainger head coach Michael Manis. “We felt like we were in over our heads a little bit, but we were able to watch some film the past couple days, correct some things, get some kids lined up and felt like today we played much better.”

Like East, Grainger lost a lot of seniors to graduation last year.

“We’ve been pretty excited about this offseason. Graduation hit us pretty hard last year, we’re really green in a lot of spots,” said Manis. “Offensively we’re really green, and defensively we have a lot of guys that have never really played football before that we’re expecting big roles out of and just trying to get them caught up on how to play football. It’s been a fun adventure, we’ve got a lot of good athletes and once we get them caught up on what to do I think we’ll be in a good spot.”

With new players all over the field, effort and intensity is paramount. Manis is bullish on his team’s buy in this season.

“We’ve had a lot of guys show great effort. I really like our young guys on the offensive and defensive line, we’re really excited about them,” said Manis. “We’ve got some size to us this year that we’ve not had that we’re looking forward to.

“As far as individual players that have really gotten after it, Brody Wells is one of our key guys on offense and defense, Tanner Watson is another guy that we’re looking forward to. Just as a collective culture-wise we’re a really tight-knit group.”

With quarterback mainstay Bryson Bennett graduating last year, Grainger has had a bit of a position battle on their hands. That contest has been a point of emphasis for them this summer.

“Our biggest focus right now offensively has been the quarterback role. We graduated Bryson, he did a great job for us last year and we’ve got two young guys looking for that spot,” said Manis. “Luke Davis and Carter Williams split reps this spring, they’re both two different guys. Carter is really athletic and can run really well… Luke is a very coachable kid and he’s going to do exactly what you ask him to do and work at it to try to improve himself.”

On the defensive side, the emphasis has been on the implementation of their new scheme.

“Defensively, schematically we’re new. We’ve got that new scheme in and now we’re just trying to poke holes in it and see what we like and don’t like,” Manis said. “Depth at linebacker is something that we’re really struggling with right now, we’re just trying to put our kids in the best position defensively to succeed.”

In the wake of last year’s playoff berth in their 6-5 season, Grainger has high hopes entering this upcoming season.

“Obviously our goal is to make it back to the playoffs. You know those guys, the goal they’re wanting to set is they want to win a playoff game,” Manis said. “That’s what they’re shooting for. We’ve got a lot of work to do to get there, but as cliche as it sounds, as young as our team is right now our goal right now is just to get better each week.”