GREENVILLE — The Greenville Green Wave got its first look at live competition Saturday morning as the varsity and junior varsity football squads hosted Springfield Northwestern in a preseason scrimmage at Greenville Alumni Stadium.
For veteran Greenville coach Steve Channell, one of the biggest positives was seeing his team walk off the artificial turf healthy.
“I feel good because we came out healthy,” Channell said. “Our physical health will be a key factor for us this year. Any coach will tell you anytime you have a game or a scrimmage and you come out healthy, that’s a plus.”
Channell was pleased with what he saw from the Green Wave defense, particularly its aggressiveness and communication.
“I thought our defense flew around pretty well,” Channell said. “We saw improvements with communication, and I just like how they played aggressively.”
Greenville kept things simple on offense, focusing on execution rather than showing much of its playbook in the first preseason scrimmage.
“Offensively, I thought we were pretty vanilla, but that’s OK because if you can’t do your basic stuff well, then you go in and try to do other things,” Channell said. “We probably ran maybe three or four different plays, and that was it, but that was by design, too.”
The veteran coach said Saturday’s goal was to evaluate how well his players could execute Greenville’s basic offense against another team.
“I wanted to make sure that we can do what we do well and execute it,” Channell said.
The Green Wave will get a different test in its final preseason scrimmage when Greenville travels to West Milton on Friday to face the Milton-Union Bulldogs.
Unlike Saturday’s controlled scrimmage with Northwestern, the Milton-Union scrimmage will more closely resemble a regular-season game.
“That will be different from today’s scrimmage in the sense it will be a game situation,” Channell said. “It will be clock running, first downs, punt returns, kickoffs. It will be a game situation.”
Friday’s scrimmage at Milton-Union is scheduled for a 7 p.m. start. Admission is $5 at the gate.
