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Highlands Today

LP Makes Progress After Rough Start

Brian Gjurgevich/Highlands Today

Lake Placid's Caleb Jones showed ability on both sides of the ball this season, and the junior is one of a number of talented Dragons returning in '09.

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By MARK PINSON Highlands Today

Published: November 28, 2008

LAKE PLACID - Taking over the reins of the Lake Placid football program just weeks before the season began had Jason Holden behind the eight-ball from the start.

The former Lake Placid Middle School coach, who played for the Green Dragons and graduated from LP in 1988, managed to instill a sense of pride in his players over the course of the season after the sudden departure of 2007 coach Tim Grant.

"Coaching at Lake Placid is a great opportunity for me and something I've been working toward since I started coaching," the 38-year-old Holden said. "I learned an awful lot my first season about the kids and myself and I look forward to the offseason and the chance to build this program."
Class 2A Lake Placid, which went 1-8 against a tough schedule, showed great improvement over the course of the season on both sides of the ball and in the effort the players put forth.

"I wish I would have had more time to prepare for the season," Holden said. "But that's the way things worked out and the coaching staff tried to emphasize on building positive attitudes in the players.

"We didn't have time to throw a bunch of new stuff at the kids, but I'm a firm believer in it's not what you run, but how well you run it and the kids did a good job of grasping what we were teaching."

The Green Dragons had a solid running game behind the strong legs of junior tailback Caleb Jones and junior fullback Navahri Holden.

"We didn't run a lot of plays and as the season progressed, we did a better job of executing our blocks and creating holes for our backs to run through," the LP coach said. "We didn't have a lot of size on our offensive line and we tried to utilize misdirection plays to take advantage of our speed,"

The Dragons tried to run a balanced offense with senior quarterback Zach Campbell displaying a strong arm.

"Zach is smart, a hard worker and very coachable," Holden said. "We tried to keep teams from stacking the line of scrimmage with our passing game.

"We want to be a balanced offense and that's something we're going to work hard to be next year."

The Green Dragon defense got better as the season progressed, especially at forcing turnovers.

"The interior of our defensive line was our strength," said the LP coach. "We wanted to stop the run up the middle, force everything wide and let our pursuit make the play."

Losing 10 seniors off the squad, including Campbell, has the Green Dragon coaching staff looking for talent to join the football team.

"Our seniors showed a lot of leadership during a tough season," said Holden. "But I'm proud of the kids because they played hard every game, no matter what the score was.

"Our two main goals in the offseason are to get more athletes out for the team and to instill a good work ethic in the classroom and the weight room. We have a good group of kids coming back next season and we need to get stronger if we want to compete for a district title."

Mark Pinson can be reached at 863-386-5837 or mpinson@highlandstoday.com

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