Learning lessons for Del Oro in Grant scrimmage

The Del Oro High School football team entered Friday night's scrimmage against Grant with plenty of preseason hype and expectations surrounding the Golden Eagles. The Pacers quickly showed them how much work remains. The Golden Eagles were outmatched in the battle of two of the Sac-Joaquin Section's most storied programs, falling 34-6 to the Pacers and providing Del Oro coach Josh Parry with an early measuring stick for a team expected to contend deep into the postseason. Parry says that he scheduled the scrimmage for precisely that reason. "That's why you schedule that," Parry said. "That's what we need to be practicing against." Del Oro needed to see how it stacks up against the likes of Grant this season, especially with the competition that awaits in the Sierra Foothill League. Parry wanted his players to experience that level of competition before the games count. The lesson, he said, was clear. "You don't show up Friday and think it's going to go your way," Parry said. "You've got to win it Saturday to Thursday in your preparation and the process." Parry said Del Oro's fundamentals were not good enough against Grant, pointing to discipline, eyes, technique, alignment and assignments as areas that need improvement. There were bright spots, however. Tight end Landen Parry and quarterback Luke Taber provided some positives for the Golden Eagles, while Del Oro's starting defensive line got to Grant quarterback Blake Nycum on each of the Pacers' first two possessions. For a team with expectations of playing deep into November, the scrimmage served as a reminder that preseason hype means little once the Golden Eagles line up against a talented opponent. "Right now it's not good enough," Parry said. "We need to be better in the film room. We need to be better at practicing. We need to be better in the classroom, and all those things correlate to coming out Friday night and getting the job done." That was the value of the night for Parry, as a scrimmage allows a team to identify problems before they become losses in the regular season, and Del Oro found plenty to address. "You get to work some kinks out, you get to find out where we're at," Parry said. "So it's just a great learning lesson for us." Parry isn't interested in softening the experience for his players. If Del Oro wants to be one of the section's best teams, he believes the Golden Eagles need to see what that standard looks like and understand how far they have to go. "You're going to get humbled in this game. It happens to everyone," Parry said. "We're going to play great teams that do a little bit better than you do, and they were better than us today." Del Oro has one week to turn the lessons from Friday's scrimmage into improvements before opening the regular season against Modesto-Downey. For Parry, nothing about the team's goals has changed and he expects Del Oro to learn from this and be ready to compete moving forward.