since instead of playing off one basic offensive set,

since instead of playing off one basic offensive set, his team has six. “It’s a hard system to learn,” said Pullin, adding it’s also hard for opponents to combat it.

His teams, he said, do not appear to be having too much difficulty mastering the large number of plays. He said the freshman team ran all of these plays within the first five days of its practice. “I was amazed at how smooth it went,” said Pullin.

He was especially impressed with the freshman team saying, “They catch on very quickly. Their execution out there impressed me. I think my JV team was trying so hard to impress me that they weren’t thinking out there,”

Thinking, to Pullin, is imperative to the game. He says the knowledge required to play football goes far beyond what one acquires by watching the game on television. Children at other schools have been working to gain this knowledge since their days on little league football teams.

His players, all in the eighth to eleventh grades, may be behind the learning curve on the technical issues of football, however he recognizes that this is not their fault. “You can’t blame the kids,” Pullin said. “They never had the opportunity to learn these things before.”

But the team is not without strengths and Coach Pullin has been impressed with the athletic ability he has seen both teams exhibit during practice.

He hopes to add to this ability a more complex approach to offense and defense than the teams used last season. “You can’t coach the simple offense and defense and be successful against these other teams,” he said.

And success is definitely his goal.

“You want to know what every coach’s goal is for a season? It’s to be undefeated. That’s the goal that you set every season. That’s a tall mountain to climb but if your goal is to come out four and four why even go out there?”