DALTON, Ga. - Football scrimmages are for fine-tuning, the time for coaches to settle the depth chart and see who's ready for live competition.
For first-year Dalton High School head coach Matt Land, Thursday's scrimmage with rival Northwest Whitfield was a bit more than that. Like many of his players donning the familiar red and white, Land was getting his first taste of trial by fire. The former Catamount player and assistant coach found being the one in charge is quite different.
"The thing I think that sneaks up on you is that you don't get to coach as much during the game as you do as a position coach," he said following the scrimmage, which saw the varsities play to a 7-7 tie in their half of going head to head. "I found myself at times wanting to holler out there. I don't want to coach over my coaches. It's important to me that they know they can trust me. It's tough to fight that urge to coach, though. That caught me by surprise."
Northwest coach Mike Falleur remembers feeling the same thing some 20 years ago.
"You think you're ready for all the things that can happen and then you realize that, hey, this is a whole lot different," Falleur said. "That's why I've got good people around me, and so does Matt, and he'll let them do their jobs. Matt Land is going to do a great job. Dalton has a great football program and obviously they're going to be fine."
A nearly sold-out crowd filled Bill Chappell Stadium on a smoldering night, hoping the scrimmage will help fill the void left by the lack of a regular season game. Dalton drops down to Class AAA this year, and with Northwest playing a full Region 7-AAAA schedule, there is no room for a non-region game. Though the hitting was hard and the intensity strong, the coaches clearly played it close to the vest.
"I saw some good things," said Falleur, whose team took a 7-0 lead on Nathan Sistrunk's touchdown run. "We moved the ball pretty well, and we were able to stop them except for one long run. We've got to develop some depth because right now we're not very deep.
"I'm going to miss playing everybody up here, but this one is special. There aren't many like this around. In fact, I don't know of another one."
Both coaches are trying to develop a starting quarterback and each said he was pleased with what he saw. The game's two starters, Dalton's Cole Calfee and Northwest's Silas Ledford are, for now, still the starters for week one.
"The big thing we wanted to see was the effort of the kids," Land said. "We know both sides are tired. You're not looking for perfection of execution, just perfection of effort. As for our quarterbacks, we're just trying to find somebody who can keep the ball between the white lines and someone who can be a leader. I think we found that."
Asked if the scrimmage taught him anything about managing a game brought a smile from the rookie head coach.
"You can't watch film on game management," he said. "I've watched some great coaches and hopefully I learned something from each of them. I know I'm going to make some mistakes, but at the end of the day I know I'm going to do the best I can."