The Irish don’t open their season until September 4th. However, the Bishop McGuinness community were able to catch a sneak peak of the 2009 Fighting Irish on Thursday night. The Irish faced off with the Lawton MacArhthur Highlanders in McGuinness’ first scrimmage before they take on Guthrie. Some would say that the Irish aren’t capable of heading back to the State Championship Game this year, but being under the radar is sometimes a blessing.

BMCHS returns star RB LaRone Richardson; a guy who will have a heavy load on his shoulders this upcoming season. Richardson did a fair job last year, but expectations couldn’t be any higher for the junior. LaRone got a fair share of reps from the quarterbacks, and did a nice job of picking up yards on MacArthur. LaRone might not be the future Kris Parham, but he’s definitely looking like a solid runningback that’ll be utilized in the offense greatly.

BMCHS also returns star players such as Sam Crabtree and Jay Lester, who hopefully will step up and take leadership roles as Gabe Ikard and Ryan Randolph did for so long. The biggest question mark so far though is who will be the quarterback. It has been rumored that it’s between sophomore Quinn Shanbour and junior David Kralh, but Coach Young has yet to release who will be the starter. Both got their fair share of snaps, and they both did a great job. The receivers seemed to run their patterns correctly, and the should be good to go.

The only thing that we might worry about is how good the defense. The defense stopped the run game fairly well, but the pass coverage has a lot of room for improvement. There are still two weeks to get the team prepared, and that is good enough time to correct some flaws. I will give Lawton MacArthur some credit as they seemed to be on top of things on run defense. Although Lawton MacArthur struggled a lot at the QB position.

BMCHS plays next week in the Pepsi Pigskin Classic, which will be held in Mustang, OK. I won’t be able to cover that game, but of course, I’ll be back for the home opener against Guthrie.