Fresh off the success of last year’s first playoff appearance in more seven years, the Selma High Saints football team took the field for the first time Tuesday with a renewed excitement.

“I was impressed with the attitude today,” Saints head football coach Leroy Miles said. “The guys have come out fired up, especially on defense, and were ready to go. The moral was better than you see at a lot of spring practices.”

Selma hopes to use the spring as a building block to improve on its 6-5 record last year, and that will start up front.

“We are looking to get better along the offensive line,” said Miles. “Our defense returns a lot, but we are having to replace some people up front. I think that if we end the spring being able to block better and tackle better, then it’s definitely a success.”

The spring is also a time to acclimate the new group of players that come through the middle school ranks and implement them into your system, which takes a little bit of time.

“We tried to do a lot of teaching today,” Miles said. “We wanted the young kids who are coming in to be prepared on what we do here. They have to learn what it takes to compete at a higher level, that starts during the spring.”

Because it was the first practice Tuesday, the Saints coaching staff used the day to go over fundamentals and set the early stages for practice later on.

“Right now we just want to get all of the teaching done,” Miles said. “We used today as a way to go over the fundamentals for that younger group of kids and as a reminder for the older ones. We did some inside out drills too, but just tried to focus mainly on the fundamentals.”