Final Coach Spotlight & Camp Schedule!

All right! I’ve saved the best for last! Our final two coaches, Billy Hughes Jr. from the Dallas Elite, and kicking coach Luis Villagomez of South Bay Kicking.

Coach Billy Hughes Jr. came out of high school as a consensus Blue Chip recruit and orally committed to the University of Oklahoma. A coaching change there led him to transfer to Southeastern Oklahoma State. Coming out of college, he signed with the San Francisco 49’ers, and then continued to play professionally with the Barcelona Dragons (NFL Europe), the North Texas Extreme (XFL) and the Fort Worth Calvary (Arena).

He has coached in the women’s game for five years, starting out with the Dallas Diamonds, who made one national championship appearance and three conference championship appearances. Last year he was with the Arlington Impact in the IWFL, and this year he will begin his first year as an offensive coordinator with the Dallas Elite (WFA). Coach Hughes also assisted with the USA Football Women’s Team USA evaluation camp in 2013.

With his intimate knowledge of how the game is played at the highest levels, Coach Hughes will bring a great perspective to the offensive linemen attending the camp. He and Coach Ring have been eager to work with each other for some time, so these sessions are sure to be high energy!

Coach Luis Villagomez is making himself available throughout the day for the kickers among us. Coach Villagomez was a Top 100 high school kicker from National City Sweetwater High and then kicked in college at West Texas A&M and professionally for the Omaha Beef of the Arena League. In 2012 he started his own kicking school, South Bay Kicking where he has coached dozens of youth, high school and junior college kickers the finer points of high-level placekicking and punting. In addition, he has participated in two invitation-only NFL kicker combines.

Luis will be at the camp on Sunday for the kickers to work with.

Finally, the schedule for the camp has been released! You can find Saturday’s schedule HERE and Sunday’s HERE. Players are free to pick and choose which sessions they attend. No camp coach is going to tell you where to go or what to see (your own coaches, if there, may have different ideas). So if you play multiple positions, you have the opportunity to see coaches at each of your spots. The two truly competitive sessions will be the combined OL/DL session first thing Sunday morning, and the 7-on-7 session to conclude the camp. The plan right now is to have both of those sessions, as well as selected individual drill and class sessions, filmed. 

Outside of those two sections, the emphasis is on getting you better by exposing you to different techniques and scheme ideas. Some will work for you, some may not. But at the very least, you have exposure to them and can put them in your personal “tool bag” of techniques.

There is no over-riding “camp doctrine” – all of the coaches will coach what they know or what they currently do with their own teams. We all know that there is no “best way” of doing anything on a football field – otherwise everyone would be doing the same thing! So come in with an open mind – you will get out of the camp what you put into it.

I can’t tell you how much all of the coaches are looking forward to this. I’ve been having conversations with several of them and we’re all chomping at the bit to get going and make this a great event!

I’ll probably take next week off from the blog, so the next time I post will be the 19^th, after the camp and our first tryouts. I’m sure there will be a lot to talk about!