The Morgan Academy Senators continued preparing for the 2012 football season on Friday, and also continued implementing a new defensive scheme.

The Senators were already set to enter the season with a new defensive coordinator in Trey Pike, but after Pike departed to accept a coaching position at Fort Scott Community College, they brought in Jeremy Carter to take over the defensive position.

Bob Taylor, head football coach of Morgan Academy, said Carter brings tons of experience to Morgan.

“Coach Carter has been a coach for several years. We were really lucky to get Jeremy here,” Taylor said. “He played football at UAB [University of Alabama-Birmingham] for four years, he was the head coach at Autauga and Billingsley High School. He’s a tremendous defensive coordinator — I went against him several times and he’s probably one of the tougher guys I’ve ever had to go against with his scheme and what he does.”

Taylor said the players have responded well to Carter, and Carter said he’s felt welcomed since his arrival at Morgan.

“It feels good. I’m glad to get back into football,” Carter said. “You do it for the right reason, you do it for the kids anyway. They’re welcoming here. Me and coach Taylor were good friends from the past, we’ve always stayed good friends, and he called and gave me a shot at it and I took it.”

While, naturally, Carter would like to stop all of the Senators’ opponents from scoring, one of his biggest goals is to instill the importance of hard work into the players on the field and throughout their lives going forward.

“We’d like to shutout everybody — that’s the game of defense,” Carter said, “but the goal is just to get the kids better. We definitely want the hard work, but we want it to help them move on in life, working as a team and showing how hard work can pay off in life. That’s what we want to see.”

As Carter has had a short time to implement his defensive scheme, he’s taken an incremental approach to improving on defense, looking for the Senators to improve with each snap of the ball.

“We want to get better every play,” Carter said. “That’s what I’m trying to get better is put in our scheme early, work on it and try to get better every single play. By the start of the season, we want to be top notch. We definitely want to get better later, but we want to get better by the first game.”