H.S. FOOTBALL: Sacred Heart enjoys 8-man ball

The football team at Sacred Heart of Jesus is a different kind of team from the rest of the football teams around here, but that’s because the Knights play a different kind of football.

They have played eight-man football for the last few years, and Michael Ashlock is beginning his second season as the head coach. He’s completing his first real offseason with the players after being named the head coach shortly before the 2014 season.

Ashlock said fans who enjoy watching offensive football with a lot of touchdowns scored will probably enjoy watching eight-man ball.

“It’d say it’s more exciting because you’re putting the ball into space more often with six fewer players – basically linemen – out there,” Ashlock said. “If your team has a lot of impact players who have the ability to get down the field and score touchdowns anytime they touch the ball, then you can easily have more excitement going on.”

Ashlock said anyone who’s been out to watch their favorite team compete in a 7-on-7 camp has virtually seen that team play eight-man ball.

“We have a center out there, which I guess is the extra guy compared to the 7-on-7, but then there are two more who line up on the line next to him,” Ashlock said. “Other than the differences with those extra people out there, there’s really not much difference between 11-man and eight-man football.

“The fundamentals of the game are the same — running, blocking, tackling. There just may not be as much blocking going on during any individual play.”

The league Sacred Heart competes in is made of teams from small private schools across the state and even a few teams made of home school students. Their district is mainly in Middle Tennessee with teams like Hendersonville, Nashville Heat and Franklin Christian being on their schedule this year.

“The competition is better in our league than some people might expect,” Ashlock said. “There’s one team in Nashville that had a couple of SEC teams looking at three or four of their athletes.

“So just because our teams don’t put as many guys on the field, we still have some exceptional athletes who compete in our games.”

Since Sacred Heart football isn’t part of the TSSAA, the Knights get to operate under a different set of rules. Things like limited work early in the summer, the 105 degree heat index rule and other regulations don’t apply to the Knights. That means Ashlock and assistant coach Ray Watt aren’t limited by those factors.

Although because their roster is still pretty short with 18 players, a lot of the early part of summer was individual work as players were in and out of town competing with various other sports teams like travel baseball and soccer.

“We get them in and do individual work — drills, workouts specialized for their position and other things like that,” Ashlock said.

In fact, when most of the team was in town in June, there wasn’t a lot of physical work done.

“We get them in a class room with a projector and do film work,” Ashlock said. “And we get into technique of tackling and things like that, but we also get pretty deep into the mental aspect of the game.

“Like when we make this call or this decision, why is that and how is it affected by something that might have happened two or three plays earlier. It may sound like we’re getting really deep into that mental aspect, which we probably are. But I’ve seen when the guys get that and understand that part of it, then they go out and devote themselves to the overall purpose of what we try to do as a team even more because they understand the whys and hows.”

Ashlock said there was one play last year that is a microcosm of how much that mental work can help the team. His son, Evan, is the quarterback, and he was forced to scramble on a play. One of their receivers, Jesse Watt, was set to run a 10-yard route. When he looked back and saw his quarterback scrambling, Watt stopped his route and curled back. The younger Ashlock threw him the ball because of the understanding Watt had to change his route and the knowledge Evan Ashlock had of what Watt was doing for him.

“You can coach that, but you’ve got to have kids who love the game and want to sit and learn about it,” Michael Ashlock said. “We have those kids here, and that makes this job a little easier and a lot of fun.”

Brandon Shields, 425-9751