As Kyle Maxfield starts his third year as Bangs football head coach, he is looking for the Dragons to build on their first postseason berth since 2014.
Maxfield and company will hit the field for the first time since the UIL’s coronavirus-imposed shutdown at 7:30 a.m. Monday.
“Even though we lost some critical offseason months, the UIL allowed us to do some more work with football skills in the summer,” Maxfield said. “I don’t know if we’re where we need to be strength-wise, but we feel like we’re ahead of the game because we’ve had a good number of them showing up this summer to do skills and strength and conditioning.”
The Dragons are coming off a 6-5 season with a bi-district round appearance. Now firmly entrenched with the program and with a new set of district foes, Maxfield believes Bangs is poised to make a major move in 2020.
“You can see it in their eyes, you can tell they’ve been waiting on this season,” Maxfield said. “But they have to enjoy the process. The main thing for us early is they’re going to have to fight through the conditioning part.”
Bangs has added a couple of new coaches to the staff in Tony Cortez and Mel Maxfield.
“One of the new guys is my cousin, Mel,” Maxfield said. “He’s one of my heroes. He has about 250 wins and had retired and gone to Oklahoma, but he came back to Texas. Now he’s going to help on both sides of the ball and be another set of eyes.
“Tony Cortez, our new superintendent Dr. (Josh) Martin knew him from Farmersville and he’s going to coach the defense. We have a lot of consistency with our staff, but we’re also adding a lot of experience. Tony has two sons you can tell are coach’s kids and that never hurts.”
Ethan Cortez, one of the sons of the new defensive coordinator, is taking over as the Dragons’ quarterback.
“Brayton Wedeman, who did a great job for us last year, he showed his true colors of being a really unselfish kid,” Maxfield said. “I think he’s going to enjoy playing safety on defense and he’ll also be a starting receiver for us somewhere. We still may have some packages for him because he did a great job running the ball as well. But Ethan Cortez has been working at the quarterback spot this summer.”
Among the greatest strengths for the Dragons at this juncture, according to Maxfield, is their experience.
“Our senior class, most of them have been playing on varsity since they were sophomores,” Maxfield said. “They have a lot of snaps on Friday nights under their belts. A lot of times you make a big jump from your junior to senior year and that’s what we’re hoping.”
The greatest area of concern for Maxfield between now and Friday, Aug. 27 when Early visits in the season opener, is, “we just have to get in shape, especially since we lost a scrimmage. We’re trying to get in good playing shape as fast as we can, but it’s going to take some time. They just have to trust the process.”
