STEENS — All first-year football coaches need time to meet and evaluate the players on their new teams.
Rusty Mason barely has had enough time to learn the names of his players at Columbus Christian Academy.
“I got in in July, which was a really crazy summer,” Mason said. “Trying to install things, it’s hard when you’re just coming in in July. You’d love to have a spring and you’d love to have a really good summer.
“But great kids, and we’re just trying to give them a crash course in how to get them up and running before the first game.”
Mason might be new to CCA, but he’s not new to football, coming to the Steens campus with more than two decades of experience. He has coached at Faith Academy, the largest Christian school in Alabama, and Cottage Hill Christian Academy, both in the Mobile area, and at Excel High School, a public school between Mobile and Montgomery.
Those schools all play 11-man football, although Mason did some consulting with six-man teams in Texas in recent years.
“This is going to be different for me just to get adjusted,” he said. “But football is still football; you still have to block, tackle, be physical. You’ve got more space to cover. We’ll get some schemes, get guys some space, and it’s going to be fun.”
Anything would be more fun than last season for the Rams, who went 1-10. The one win was fun, as CCA scored 54 first-half points and coasted to a 54-34 win over Kemper Academy in De Kalb.
Some of the same players who did the damage in that game will be back, including Drake Shaw, who threw three touchdown passes; Landon Townley, who rushed for two scores; and Beau Kemp, who rushed for a touchdown and returned a kickoff for another.
“Townley up front is going to be a good player for us,” Mason said. “I expect Beau Kemp to be a good player for us running the football, so I’m excited about that. At the quarterback position, we’ve got a good battle going on there. Drake’s a smart kid. I think he’s going to adapt. Luke’s up there, too,” referring to Luke Phillips, like Shaw and Kemp a junior..Townley is a senior.
Part of the fun could be Mason’s offense, which figures to score more than the 19 points per game the Rams averaged in 2020.
“I’ve been an Air Raid guy for 15 years now, so I’ve been doing this a long, long time,” Mason said. “Everyone’s got a different system, not that what we’re doing is better, it’s just different. We’re just trying to teach our kids how to play fast, play aggressive and play smart.
“I think it will be a little different than what they’re used to.”
And that is going to require some adjustment.
“I think the mental part’s going to take us a few weeks,” he said. “I think we’ll get better. Like I tell the kids, if we’re better week 10 than we were week1, we’ve accomplished something.”
But Mason stressed that accomplishing something isn’t just found in wins and losses. He chose to coach at CCA largely because of the type of school it was — “Their mission and their vision are very much mine,” he says — and because it was closer to his family in the Mobile area than Texas. Finding a good school fit for his youngest son was another major factor, one that ties into how he sees football’s role in the CCA mission..
“We feel like it’s a tool we use to develop kids into young men,” he said. “The first part of today, the first 20, 25 minutes, was talking about how does football teach you to be a better husband, a better father, a better worker, a better business owner, whatever that may look like. Obviously we want to win, but we’re not going to win at all costs.”
The on-field part of the Rams’ mission begins Aug. 20 against Christian Collegiate Academy of Gulfport.
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