By Scott McDonald
A small group of Coral Shores varsity football players gathered in a classroom Tuesday afternoon to await instruction from their head coach. Before coach Alphonso Bryant arrived, the guys chatted up the room with a little football talk and a lot of typical high school guy talk.
They chummed it up until Bryant arrived to let them know they are the leaders of this Hurricane squad in 2018, and it’s why they’d been chosen to represent the entire team in a photo.
Once complete, the players turned off the laughter switch and turned on their game faces, despite it only being an early-week practice in preparation for another Friday night battle.
The actions are indicative of the season, in which the Hurricanes are 2-1 and lead the league in scoring at 79 points. Coral Shores looks for a third-consecutive win as they travel to Westminster Christian in Miami. The guys will shed the week behind them and take aim at another win.
“We’ve just got to keep executing and playing our game,” Bryant said.
Coral Shores opened the season with a 27-15 loss at LaSalle.
“That first game we came out rusty and didn’t execute as well as we could,” Bryant said.
The Hurricanes played their home opener Aug. 31 against Florida Christian with an offensive explosion in a 42-20 thumping of the Patriots. Coral Shores hit the road again and shut out St. Brendan, 22-0.
Now the Hurricanes travel to Westminster for their third road trip in the first four weeks of the season.
The engine that moves the machine starts with senior quarterback Dylan Scheu, a tall kid at 6-foot-2 and weighing 187 pounds, who has a command of Bryant’s version of the West-Coast offense. The Hurricanes evenly run and pass, and that balance has kept opponents off-kilter the last two weeks.
The backfield is led by the duo of Christian Foote and Valente Reynoso-Heaton, who also stars at middle linebacker on defense. The backs run behind Jeronimo Reynoso-Heaton and Trent Norrie, who’s also a force on the defensive line.
Robbie Prosek is a force at receiver, and has an even bigger presence at defensive end.
The Hurricanes run a 4-4 defense, and Bryant said the alignments have gotten better, but the tackling needs to be a little less sloppy.
“We need to tighten up our tackling on defense,”Bryant said. “We’re in the right places, but just not making some of the tackles.”
The Hurricanes return home next week for a two-game home stretch against West Park Prep and Ranson Everglades. They finish the regular season at Marathon and at home against Berean Christian.
