Black Diamonds to begin shortened spring practice

Although the 2025 football season for the Sallisaw Black Diamonds won’t get started until their Zero Week game against the Pryor Tigers at 7 p.m. Aug. 29, the Black Diamonds will get a kick start to this upcoming season when spring practice will begin Monday and last all week, ending with a twoday team camp on Thursday and Friday.

“We’re looking more toward the fall than anything else,” third-year Sallisaw coach Brandon Tyler said. “I haven’t seen a game won in May yet. Spring football gives us an opportunity to kind of go out there to start kind of getting back into the groove of things and see what we retained from last year on both sides of the ball.”

Spring practice originally was going to try to start this week. However, since the Sallisaw Black Diamonds baseball team made the Class 4A State Tournament for the first time this decade and just the fourth time overall in school history, the 2025 spring practice had to wait until next week to get going.

“We’ll get three days and a team camp, and maybe a little bit when we get back in June before Summer Pride,” Tyler said. “Our baseball team won (the Class 4A Super Regional), and I’m glad for Coach (Curtis) Wartchow and (assistant) Coach (Matt) Lamb. They have 13 guys who play football. It’s a great honor for them to get to play in the state tournament. With the extended baseball season, it cut our spring football practice down. We’ll look forward to Monday. We’ll go from 9-11 a.m. We’ll see what we can do those first three days and get back into the flow of things. Next Thursday and Friday will be the team camp, May 22-23.”

There’s still some key things Tyler and the coaching staff want to see out of the Black Diamonds in the weeklong spring practice when it begins Monday morning.

“We just need to see what we’ve retained,” he said. “It’s going on year three now. They should know what we’re going to be going offensively and defensively. It’s just plugging in new personnel. We have to find our three front (offensive) lineman, graduating (All-Stater) Quaid (Girdner), Cooper (Carter) and Zyler (Rogers, who signed with Northeastern State University on Feb. 5). We’ve got to find three (offensive) linemen up front. We have to find a receiver who can replace (graduating senior Cooper) Cox. Defensively, we graduated (Caden) Cowan (who signed with Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College on Feb. 12) and Kash Keepes, so we’ve got to find some guys on defense as well. We just need to find some guys who are ready to step up and meet the challenge.”

Once spring practice begins Monday morning, it’s just a slow, gradual march toward the 2025 season opener at Pryor.

“This will get us going,” Tyler said. “Then, we’ll get into our Summer Pride in June and July, and continue to get bigger and stronger. Then, we’ll come back to practice in August and get going full speed ahead. We’re looking forward to it.”