Scrimmage formats do not make for serious measuring sticks on a football team’s progress, but Upvalley head coaches Mike Ervin of Calistoga High and David Collinsworth of St. Helena had their points of emphasis Friday at Robert Louis Stevenson Middle School.

The three-way scrimmage also included Berean Christian (Walnut Creek).

Collinsworth looked for general execution of the offensive and defensive schemes as well as tackling.

Ervin was particularly pleased with how his team rebounded after a tough start on both sides of the ball against St. Helena.

“On the first play, St. Helena looked like it was shot out of a cannon,” said Ervin, who enters his second season at the helm. “Then all of the sudden it was like, ‘All right, that’s enough. We don’t want to do this. This is not fun.’ You look to see how much resilience they have because these other schools have a few more kids than we do, but our kids don’t quit.”

Ervin came away from the scrimmage feeling that his offensive and defensive lines are continuing to build the necessary cohesion.

“You can have the best running back in the world but if your line doesn’t block you don’t have anything,” Ervin said.

Collinsworth, who is in his first season as the Saints head coach, came away from the scrimmage believing that his offense executed decently while the tackling was satisfactory on defense.

On the latter side of the ball, however, Collinsworth felt that the team needed work in defending the option. Both Calistoga and Berean Christian run at least a variation of that attack.

“You can never really judge anything off of a scrimmage because there’s a lot of intricacies that aren’t included such as special teams,” Collinsworth said.

“All in all, it was good day and we’re working to be prepared for September 7th.”

On the plus side, Collinsworth came away pleased with Chris Yeakey, Kendall Sanders, Morgan Densberger and Edgar Caldera. Yeakey and Sanders are two key returnees, while Densberger and Caldera are two first-year varsity players that Collinsworth is counting on to make a contribution.

“The offensive line did a pretty good job for the most part,” Collinsworth said. “There’s a few things we need to clean up and we’ll do that this week.”