Amid head coach search, Choctaw football conducts spring practice

 




Jason Peevyhouse

Editor, JP Productions Sports

With the search for the next head football coach of Dyer County High School still going on, the Choctaw football team got its 2025 spring practice completed earlier this month, finishing up with a home scrimmage against Munford on May 8 in Newbern.


Following the scrimmage with the Cougars, Justin Dubruiel, DC’s interim head coach, talked about how the scrimmage went.

“You know, we saw some good things,” Dubruiel said last week. “We definitely saw some things to work on.

“Not having everybody there kind of hurts because you want to see what your whole team looks like.”

As Dubruiel explained, there was still players available to give the Choctaw coaching staff a look.

“We got some new guys that came in and showed us some things,” he explained. “We had some young guys in that also showed us some things.

“You try to use spring practice as a kind of measuring stick of where you need to be and where you want to be. We’re going to use what we’ve got and try to improve what we’ve got.”

The interim Dyer County head coach felt it was a good scrimmage for his team.

“Munford is good,” Dubruiel said. “They’re a 5A school that has got some big kids and they were physical with us.

“That gives us something to look forward to when we do it again in the fall.”

A spring practice session isn’t just about that final scrimmage before putting the pads away until fall. It’s also about how much you grow through the course of those practices.

“We saw growth more from our younger guys than anybody,” Dubruiel said. “We got seven practices in with two of them just in helmets.

“We were able to see what they could pick up in a short amount of time. I think our younger guys really got picked up because our older guys really helped them out, especially in practice. They were a big help in coaching up younger guys and newer guys that hadn’t been in the program.”


Dyer County will continue workouts until the TSSAA-mandated dead period which begins in late June.

“Much like everybody else, get stronger and get faster,” Dubruiel said of the goal between now and June 20 when the dead period begins. “See if we can get more physical and compete with each other.

“Who knows what we’ll get in 7-on-7s in June but I see a lot getting faster, stronger and getting better at communicating with each other.  Things like that.”

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