Future Eagles will be shown at Rio Vista Football Camp Sports

RIO VISTA As Rio Vista football is coming to its best in two decades, interest in Eagle football is at an all-time high, as evidenced by the 80 upcoming Kotka youth camps at Rio Vistas this week.

Rio Vista head coach Kasey Black said they had 41 campers from first to fifth grade and 39 future eagles from sixth to nine in Eagle Field this week.

To say I’m surprised is a kind of understatement, Black said. You really don’t expect as many kids in a camp in a small 2A school as we do. So our coaches were excited to work with some of our older kids and have fun and also teach younger kids.

Attendance more than doubled from the 2019 Rio Vista youth football camp (there were no camps in 2020 due to COVID) when Black said they had barely 30 children in 2019.

Black said he believes part of the increased attendance at the camp is due to the Eagles going 7-4 in 2020, their first winning season since 2003.

I think there’s a big correlation to that, Black said. People want to connect with the winners. At the end of the day, they want to do. But I think they have also got to know our staff. Now most of our staff have been here for four years now and I will continue in my third year so those kids know who we are and want to be around us.

This week at camp, Black said it was productive to be able to get a head start with sixth- and ninth-grade students to learn what the Eagles at the high school level are doing offensively and defensively.

We treated this other camp as an introductory course in our attack and defense, which is huge for those younger and freshman children so they can start learning about our offenses and defenses and the like, Black said. It’s really big. For our younger children, they now started at 7 and 7 and they kind of understand what asked them to make the injury so nice.

We didn’t get into lineups or the like, but for example the receivers work on which foot we should be forward, where we want to grab the ball, the short routes and how we want to run them, but most of all how to catch the football; for running backs, how to change the channel, which arm must be up; defenders trying to teach them mechanics making sure we have a good foundation for us.