The third week of September was the varsity football team’s bye week. The bye week is a week where a team does not have a scheduled game. Teams on their bye week look to rest their players and hope to heal their injured ones, as well as getting extra preparation in for the next week’s opponent. The Streaks take advantage of the bye week to make sure they’re ready for the rest of the season.

“Our bye week falls in the middle of our schedule. We’re done with our out-of-district games, and now we’re going into our valley district schedule,” Coach Hook said. “That’s really advantageous to us that it’s right in the middle of the season.”

The team already has injured players, but healing isn’t the only thing on the coaches’ minds during the bye week.

“The biggest thing we do is try to make sure we’re healthy for the second half of the year. So if we have bumps, bruises, whatever it may be, we try to let the guys heal up from those,” Hook said. “ We have fewer practices to make sure the players’ academics are up to snuff, but also to recharge everyone’s batteries. We also try to reflect on where we need to be for the second part of the year to play as well as we can.”

As they year goes on, players sometimes lose track of the basics that were built at the beginning of the season, but the coaching staff uses the bye week to help with that.

“Sometimes when you’re preparing [during a regular week], you don’t have as much time to work on everything, such as the little things, but we go back to make sure that we’re doing the basics right,” Hook said.

Junior Stedman Clark was out last week with a bruised rib. According to Clark, this bye week was the perfect time for him to heal.

“The coaches want the players to get healthy. They worked with me this week to make sure that I was ready for our next game,” Clark said.

The bye week gives the Streaks an advantage over their next opponent, Waynesboro, given the extra time they had to rest and prepare. They also went and watched their game on Friday night to scout the team.

“We feel like we’re a stronger team coming off the bye week. We have more time to prepare, watch film, and go over plays. We scouted them, so I think we’ll be alright.”