Monday morning started another season of Bethel football, as the Bees began two-a-days leading toward their season opener August 25 against Northridge. Coach Scott Clodfelter and the players have put in a lot of time this summer to improve their game, and their chances at capturing a Cross County Conference league title.

Despite losing some key players, the Bees also return some quality athletes and Clodfelter hopes that the hard work this summer will lead toward some good things.

“Our chemistry has been the best it has been since I have been there,” Clodfelter said. “We have had good summer workouts despite having some problems with the construction over there. We had to move our workouts to evenings, and that kind of hurt us with numbers because kids were working in the evening.”

“We have had some great sessions in the weight room, and the kids performed well in the 7-on-7s we were involved in.”

This past month, the Bees had their camp which allowed them to put in their base offense and defense. They are also instituting the new heads-up tackling.

“We have the guys who teach that technique of tackling coming out to our school to teach our kids the proper way of tackling,” he said, stating that he wants to tackle the concussion problem that has grown the past several years.

“There has been some studies in some of the states who already do this, where concussions are down 43%, but now if you get hit in the head it’s an automatic concussion,” Clodfelter added. “Our kids are getting better at it.”

Clodfelter also stated that numbers look to be better for the Bees this year, with 28-30 kids planning to suit up for the Bees this year.

“My goal was to get 30 kids this year, but we lost a couple of kids to transfers or we would have probably been over that,” the Bees coach said.

“I have seen a lot of leadership from the kids coming back,” he added. “We had a ton of starters who were very young when I got here, now in my third year, we have several seniors who have grown up and their leadership is there.”

With so many kids back and more seasoned, Clodfelter feels the season could be a success in the Cross County Conference.

“I think we can do well, we are losing a lot of yards from running back, but have a lot of kids back on both sides of the ball,” he said. “We have eight kids back on both sides of the ball.”

Bethel will be practicing behind Tipp Middle School the first two weeks of two-a-days due to construction at Bethel, and Clodfelter knows a lot has to get done.

“The biggest thing we have to work on is our fundamentals, speed and not making mistakes,” he said. “We have to get ourselves ready for the opener.”

Bethel will host a Midnight Madness coming up this Friday night, with a 10:30 pm practice at the field, following a special Midnight Madness from 12-1:15 a.m. The community is welcome to attend and support the Bees.