ITG Next spoke with Jensen Beach football head coach Timothy Caffey about the Falcons’ start to the season, as well as a look forward to district play.
Q: Your Jensen Beach football team is off to a 4-1 start. What are your thoughts on your team’s performance up to this point?
A: We’re a young team and we play hard. We relied on our defense the first couple of games of the season, and our offense finally started clicking against Stoneman Douglas a little bit. We’ve got some kids that are playing above the level of what they’d normally be expected, because we are young. About half of our defense is sophomores, along with a few juniors and a couple of seniors. Our kids are out there playing hard, and they’re believing in the process of what we’re trying to teach here at Jensen, and if you keep playing hard and do the right things, then good things will happen.
Q: How would you say this 2022 team compares to some of your previous teams at Jensen Beach?
A: This team is a little bit more athletic than they seem. They’re resilient kids and they’re going to battle. Not saying that my previous teams haven’t, but these kids are going to battle from start to finish, and it’s more of them that will do it. In the past, we would have a few kids that were just going to battle, like the Jamien Sherwoods, the Tyrese Jacksons, the Dylan Dushanes. Those guys were going to battle, and I would say the difference is that we have a few more of those kids that are going to continue to battle, keep going, do it the right way, and hustle. Those are the type of kids that we have, and we’re a little more athletic than we look.
Q: Can you speak about the impact your defense has had toward your success this season?
A: Our defense has impacted the team because they’re the type of kids who are going to hustle, they battle, they’re going 11-man to the ball, and it’s kind of contagious when you see the kids on defense, especially young kids, battling that way. Everybody that we’ve played is a classification ahead of us, or they have Division 1 players, so our kids are trying to overcome some lack of athleticism or size. Our defense has decided if we can get together with every man to the ball, then good things will happen, and so far, so good.
Last week, we ran into a buzzsaw. Benjamin had a great game plan. They’re loaded over there. I don’t think they have a receiver under 6-2. We have to play those types of games to find out where we are. Offensively, we battled and put up 30 points against a good Benjamin defense. There are some positives out of it. You obviously want to come out on the better end of it, but we did battle.
Q: What are you looking to see from this Jensen Beach football team as the season progresses?
A: Improvement. Improvement in our practice habits. Improvement off the field. Doing the things necessary to make sure that you’re concentrating on the field. When you have a young team, they tend to do maybe some knucklehead stuff in the classroom; we need to eliminate that type of stuff so we don’t have to worry about that. Let’s go out and practice harder, more efficient, and be smarter. My high school coach used to always say the game is won 80 percent from the neck up, so we need to be mentally prepared because Port St. Lucie is a very athletic team. They’re going to be looking to come in and battle, so we have to make sure we do the little things necessary to be prepared for district play.
