CBA's Brooks likes team's intensity

By Andrew Stevens
Published in Sports on August 2, 2013 1:49 PM

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astevens@newsargus.com

PIKEVILLE -- Coaches barked out encouragement.

Players hustled from drill to drill while wearing T-shirts with the words "New Beginning" on the back.

The first official practice under new Charles B. Aycock head football Steve Brooks could be described in one word -- intense.

Ninety Golden Falcons worked out Tuesday morning under overcast skies with light rain. Brooks and his staff split the team up between the varsity and junior varsity players. Aycock worked on both offensive and defensive plays and went through conditioning drills.

"We had good intensity," Brooks said. "We were able to get after it and we got better today. With the schedule we have it's very important that we set the tone and understand early that we better go hard every day or we're going to get beat by a lot."

T.J. Morrow, a transfer from River Valley High School in Yuba City, Calif., took the majority of the snaps with the first team offense.

Morrow displayed a strong arm on passing plays and has performed well in passing league games this summer.

"T.J. is a football, basketball and track guy with great athletic ability and a great GPA," Brooks said. "He's a 'yes sir, no sir' guy with high character. He's had a great summer and he throws the ball really well and he can run the ball well. Teams aren't going to be able to just sit on us and he's smart enough to read coverages and he knows when to pull it and go."

Brooks, a former defensive coordinator at Ayden-Grifton, was hired in June to replace Randy Pinkowski, who led Aycock to a 6-6 record in his final season.

The first-year head coach has already implemented his version of the offense Ayden-Grifton ran during Brooks' tenure with the Chargers. The offense centers around both shotgun and wing-T formations.

"I'm putting my own twist on what we did at Ayden-Grifton," Brooks said. "I feel like we got better when we started going fast with the no-huddle and with the shotgun and wing-T. A lot of what we did today was the Ayden-Grifton stuff with my own twist on it."