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By RODNEY PAGE and JOHN SCHWARB
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 7, 2001
Monday was the opening day of football practice.
Which meant, as always, it was a day of hope and anticipation, when players and coaches look forward optimistically.
In the wake of recent tragedies, it also was a day for caution about heatstroke.
Perhaps nowhere was the fresh start more appreciated than at St. Petersburg, where Todd St. Louis began his first day as the Green Devils coach with a locker room full of players. St. Louis, who spent three years at Indian Rocks Christian and rarely had more than 15 players on the roster, had 35 players for Monday's practice.
"I'm in heaven," said St. Louis, who spent last season as an assistant at Countryside. "It's a different mind-set for me. We don't have to have the same players on the field all the time.
"If we have a kid who might have a bad attitude or that doesn't want to play hard, okay, we can find somebody else to put in there. We had only about 10 guys at Indian Rocks that could really play."
The Green Devils, who went 3-7 last season, spent their first day doing various agility drills without pads, like 20- and 40-yard dashes and weightlifting. St. Petersburg will practice from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. this week and then travel to Groveland on Monday for a weeklong camp.
St. Louis took his Indian Rocks team to Groveland in 1999. The team will have two-a-day practices, hold strategy meetings and watch videotape of practice.
There will be no television, no air conditioning; just a tent, a sleeping bag and plenty of football.
"It's really about teaching and developing team unity," St. Louis said. "We do this so we don't have to play catch-up once the season begins. We get them used to our procedures, and when the games start, we don't want them to think. We want them to just do it without thinking about where they need to be."
At Clearwater, the thermometer crept above 90 degrees, but the biggest player of the 40 on the field reported no ill effects.
Miguel Master, a 6-foot-4, 330-pound lineman, did not come close to winning any of the six "gassers" that marked the end of practice just before 4 p.m. But for the first day, it was about what he expected.
"It was tough. It's always hard the first day," the junior said. "You just get tired."
Like all schools, Clearwater's two-a-days were held in shorts and helmets. State rules require three days of conditioning work before full pads.
"The heat, since we're from here, doesn't really get us," Master said. "But once we're full-padded, it will."
Several area schools run their second practices in the evening to dodge the heat, but coach Tom Bostic opts for the mid-afternoon despite it being one of the hottest parts of the day.
"We're always concerned about the heat, but this is really no different when we start after school (practices at 3 p.m.)," said Bostic, whose Tornadoes closed last year with a four-game winning streak to get to 5-5. "We had one kid (today) that we had to say, "Sit down, have some water.' But he hadn't been here this summer.
"Most of the kids have been here all summer, lifting and running."