EAST ORANGE – Every summer for the past decade, the East Orange Football Mini Camp has drawn hundreds of young talent.
The three-day camp, held at Paul Robeson Stadium, again was a success.
The camp took place July 13-15 with about 200 campers in attendance.
EOCHS head football coach Al-Majid Hutchins directed the camp for the first time. The camp previously was directed every year by former EOCHS head coach Marion Bell.
For the first time, the camp drew all the East Orange Pop Warner teams.
“It was a success,” said Hutchins, who will enter his second year as the Jaguars head coach this fall. “The kids had a bunch of fun. We have some top talent in the city at the camp. It was great, all-around. This was the first time that all of the Pop Warner football teams from the city was involved, so they definitely came out and showed their support.”
The campers honed their football skills through various drills and exercises.
The main goals of the camp are to bring the community together and for the EOCHS program to build a relationship with the Pop Warner teams.
“It was just a great atmosphere for our coaches,” said Hutchins, a 2007 EOCHS graduate who played for Bell. “It gave us an opportunity to evaluate kids in our community that we probably wouldn’t see. We got so many Pop Warner football teams in East Orange, but we definitely see some great talent out there; some great eighth-graders who are going to be ninth-graders that we definitely will implement in our program.”
The camp particularly allowed Hutchins and his assistant coaches to strengthen their relationship with the Pop Warner coaches, who were able to see how the Jaguar coaches work. “I think they enjoyed it. They learned some things from it,” said Hutchins of the Pop Warner coaches. “It was just a great, all-around event.”
The EOCHS varsity football team has been working out and will officially begin practice August 11. Their first scrimmage is August 20 in which they will host a quad with Willinboro, Camden and Irvington at Robeson Stadium at 10:30 a.m. The Jaguars will kick off the season Sept. 9 at Memorial of West New York.
EOCHS and the Orange High School Tornadoes will be competing in the newly-formed North Jersey Super Football Conference, which is a merger of four conferences (Super Essex Conference, Big North Conference, Northwest Jersey Conference and Hudson County Interscholastic Athletic League). Last season, the Jaguars qualified for the state North Jersey Section 2, Group 5 playoffs and finished with a 4-6 record.
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