We're in a definitive transitional period in Cal football. While we await our golden cathedral to open in 2012, Cal becomes a nomadic Bedouin traveling from high school field to community college field in search of the sweet nectar of open space and yard lines.
On April 2, 2011, the football team held court in Oakland at Laney College. It was the first of four open practices for the fans. Cal is trying to make lemons out of lemonade and is holding 4 separate open practices in the month of April. Two in the East Bay, one in Sacramento, and one in the South Bay. A great way to help promote Cal athletics.
So, on 4.2.2011, we were here:
verytech has already provided a great update on the day's festivities. After the jump, some visual evidence that the day occurred! GO BEARS!
Laney College is near downtown Oakland by Lake Merritt. It has its own lake, too:
We have photos from not only myself, but also turkey, who has a much superior camera than mine.
When we got there, it was overcast, but warming up. They had a whole food set up there, but I don't believe it was for plebes like us. When I walked by I got the stank eye. There were large amounts of high school coaches there and apparently there was a coaching clinic going on. They got the food. Oh well.
The team was warming up when we got there.
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They were breaking up into multiple position groups to do drills all over the field. It was hard to keep track of what was going on all over the place. Plus, after about 5 minutes, a coach would blast an air horn and everybody would run somewhere else to do a different drill. So, we'd watch QBs for a few minutes and then walk over towards where the OLine was only to have the entire team reconfigure itself and we were back in front of QBs. Kind of interesting.
Keenan Allen was there.
Here, the coach was demonstrating a specific maneuver to be copied by the players in practice.
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It all looked good to me. Our team always looks really smooth when there is nobody impeding their progress, I guess. But Coach Gould was attempting to simulate an opposition. Such as this drill where players ran down the field while another tried to strip the ball from them.
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This drill involved a football on a yo yo string of some sort. Is that game legal and, if so, how soon can we get the Yo Yo Play involved??
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Coach Gould was focused greatly on minimizing fumbling, it seemed. Not only did he have that drill as described above, but he also had this one where he hit a player with a boxing glove on a stick to force them to focus on ball security. I think that that is a great focus.
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Gabe King came running over near where we were sitting. He looked really amazing out there in the drills. Here is hoping he has a great career at Cal!
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Note Tedford watching this passing drill here.
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So, that is a good start to the photos. I wish I had more incisive comments, but it is just sitting there watching drills take place. It is hard to extrapolate how certain players will play on the field from one sided drills. Next, we'll look at more drills and then after that more drills. Hey, it's pretty much all that happened! GO BEARS!