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On Monday, the Chambers Academy football team held its first 7-on-7 scrimmage of the summer, as they hosted the reigning AISA 2A Champion Autauga Academy.

“This has been very good for us,” Chambers Academy head football coach Jason Allen said. “We’re very excited to be out here playing another team from another town. Guys are out here having a good time and getting better, and that’s what it’s all about.”

Due to COVID-19, the 7-on-7 was able to only have one visiting team, so the two teams played six total games, with each game lasting roughly 20 minutes. Both teams used their first-team offense and defense in the first two games, while the second team played in the final two games.

Since players weren’t wearing pads, a player placing hands on a player counted them as down. There were only passes in the game since there wasn’t an offensive line. Starting from the 40-yard-line, each team had three plays to advance 10 yards to get a new set of downs.

In the first set of games, the first team Rebels offense looked sharp. They were able to take advantage of the speed of new receivers John White, Tyrun Trammel and Jeremy “Spud” Conway and score consistently when they had the ball on offense. Each new receiver caught a touchdown.

“We have good speed. Speed makes a big difference,” Allen said. “When you have speed, you have a chance to get open and create space. This is half the equation because you don’t have the guys up front protecting and that’s huge as well. This is huge that we need to work on from a timing standpoint. I feel like we’ll keep getting better the more we do this.”

In the opening trio of games, the Rebels were able to consistently keep the Generals out of the end zone. There was a combination of keeping Autauga to short gains and some dropped balls.

The dropped balls mostly came on deep downfield passes, where the receiver was open in the endzone but couldn’t hold onto the ball.

“We were mixing up our coverages a lot,” Allen said. “We’ve got some new guys. It’s going to take some time, it always takes a little more time on that side of the ball, but we’ll keep getting better. This game you’re going to score a lot. I’ve seen some really good things. We just have to tweak a few things and keep getting better, and I think we will.”

The Rebels will face Escambia, who has played in the last three 2A AISA State Championship games, on Thursday and Bessemer Academy, who is the reigning 3A AISA State Champion, later this week.

“We’re going to try to play the best,” Allen said. “We feel like you need to play good people to get better.”