Jal Record

JAL WEATHER

Satterwhite to use Air Raid Offense

By John Earp

Jal High School’s new head football coach and athletic director, Brent Satterwhite, has already begun to have a significant impact on the Panther Football Team.

Coming to Jal with 35 years of experience as a coach, Satterwhite spent the last four years as head coach and athletic director for Tatum. He says leaving Tatum was a hard decision for him, “because I love Tatum and the kids there. Great little community.” He is a native of Texas. He attended college at Abilene Christian University and then West Texas State University, which is now known as West Texas A&M University. He teaches social studies, physical education, and weightlifting.

He says he would like to have 30 young men on his football team this season. There were 24 football players practicing Tuesday night in Panther Stadium, with one having tweaked his knee the previous week and another being on vacation, so the team is close to that goal. Coach Satterwhite says, “So, we’re close to getting 30. We have a full JV schedule, so we’re really hoping to get to play that JV schedule. Everybody around here starts with the intention of playing the JV schedule, and then all of the sudden they don’t have enough kids or they don’t have the right kids to make that happen. We really want to, because we believe that our kids need to play to get better. There’s so many other things that catch their attention. If we don’t get them early, they haven’t fallen in love with what we do, they’re off doing other things that may be less desirable, they’re looking for something else to do.”

Satterwhite is big on the Air Raid Offense, which is a type of passing game that uses wide receivers especially, with short passes and quick reads, along with misdirection to keep the defense guessing. Satterwhite has already begun implementing the new-to-Jal offense with his team. He noted that Jal has been successful in recent years running the option. He says he “grew up on Wing T power-type stuff, but when we went to Tatum we started going to this and we had a lot of success with it. Kids enjoy it. They’re spread out. They get to catch the ball in space, make a move and maybe score a touchdown because they only had one dude to read instead of ten that were in the box. It probably takes less toll on some of their bodies, you know, the smaller guys that aren’t getting beat up inside. We like it because basically, you’re going to take the football and try to get it in some of the hands of the playmakers. We’re going to run the ball. We’ll run the ball plenty. In fact, when I was at Tatum we had a kid named Hayden Mullins and he was eight-man player of the year. He was a running back/linebacker, so he got really involved in running the ball, catching the ball, running screens, all that kind of stuff. We will have the flexibility to both run and pass.”

Assistants this year are Coach Peacock, also from Texas, Coach Soliz, another Texan coming from Tatum, Coach Ross, Coach Lujan, and Coach McWilliams. He says, “The Texas guys that are here, like Ross and McWilliams, they’ve coached all this stuff before, it’s not anything new.”

Satterwhite will also be serving as athletic director for Jal High School. He says his goal is to make all JHS sports top notch, the best they can be, with the aim being to have everybody on the same page, working together, and doing everything for the Panthers. Tuesday night at practice, he tried to stir his players by saying, “You’ve got to act like you want to be here!”

Two-a-days start August 5th. The Panthers’ first scrimmage is scheduled for August 15th against Hobbs. Their first game is scheduled for Friday August 23rd at Dexter.