Video Transcript
Hello, and welcome to Pin Oak Press, the student-produced journalism program at Pin Oak Middle School, HISD’s premier foreign language magnet. I’m Sal Salvatore, and today we’re covering a story that reflects on the football team’s challenging season, which wrapped up about a month ago with a final record of 0–6.
The team faced a tough year, dealing with issues like only half the players showing up to practice and seven players being ineligible to play due to failing classes. We spoke with coaches and players to understand what went wrong and what can be improved for next season.
We also had the opportunity to sit down with Coach Carter, who serves as both the football coach and athletic director at Pin Oak Middle School, to hear his plans for next season.
Carter: I’m Coach Carter, one of the eighth-grade football coaches and the defensive coordinator.
Next season, we need to focus on tackling. Tackling is critical—we have to improve our tackling technique and work on gang tackling. We need to stop being afraid of contact. Instead of receiving it, we need to start delivering it. That’s going to be one of our main priorities for next year.
Aside from tackling, one of the biggest challenges this year was team speed. In the past, we’ve had pretty good speed, but this year, we weren’t as fast as we needed to be, and it showed in our games.
Early on, we noticed the lack of speed, so we started incorporating more running and agility drills. As the season progressed, we realized tackling was another area that needed attention, so we shifted our focus to improving solid contact during games.
The coaching staff also meets after practices to discuss areas for improvement and plan for the next session. Despite the challenges, the kids kept fighting to get better and perform in games, which was a positive takeaway from this season.
Another issue was attendance at practice. Not having enough players at practice hurt the team. You need 21 players to play a game—11 on offense and 11 on defense—but when only 16 kids show up to practice, it’s hard to prepare properly. This lack of participation impacted our ability to see things come together as they should have.
Thank you to Coach Carter for allowing our journalism students to interview him and providing us with a greater understanding of the Pin Oak Middle School football team.
That’s all for today, Chargers. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next time!
Pin Oak Press 