The last time Portal High School held a spring practice, tailback Craig Ware was still in elementary school and America had just been introduced to the iPhone 3G.
    Now, Ware is a rising senior and for the first time in his three years at Portal is getting to experience spring practice. Needless to say he and the rest of his teammates are pretty excited.
    “I thought we could have used this last year, so when I found out we were getting a spring practice I couldn’t wait to get out here,” Ware said. “We already look better now than we did last fall.”
    Head coach Matt Smith, now entering his third season as Portal’s head coach, has noticed the rise in enthusiasm too. It’s his first spring practice as a head coach and is thankful he gets the extra time to work with his team.
    “When you don’t have a spring, you’re really going into the fall camp with a lot of unknowns,” Smith said. “Now we’ll have a better idea of who will be playing where once we get to summer workouts.”
    It’s no secret Portal is in a unique situation among the other Class A programs. The Panthers are one of the smallest football-playing schools in the state with around 434 total students between the middle and high school. This creates a numbers disadvantage in a sport that demands high numbers, and for Portal, having 30 kids out for football at one point in time was a success.
    “We have about 110 boys in our whole school, and we have 44 kids dressing out for us today,” Smith said. “I think those are good numbers for us. Just think about if other schools had those kinds of ratios.”
    For comparison, if Statesboro had the same percentages come out for their football team they’d dress 308 players. While Smith admits 55 would be his ideal number, having 44 kids is an improvement from last season according to Ware. Ware noted there were no empty lockers this spring, while there were “at least 12” during the fall.
    An important focus of the spring for Smith is getting his younger players the reps — specifically the rising sophomores. Smith expects his tenth graders to make up a good bit of the team next season and believes a decent portion of them will have to start in the fall.
    “This is why it’s so important we take advantage of the two weeks we’re getting this spring,” Smith said. “I’d rather not have to break in five new offensive lineman in the fall.”
    Along the same point of his young players — though not necessarily related to spring practice — is what Smith is planning to do with his JV players. Three years ago Portal did field enough players for a JV team. Smith says that class had around 12 kids, but not being able to play in game action put a serious dent in the class’ numbers.
    “No one wants to be a tackling dummy for ten weeks, that takes the fun out of playing,” Smith said. “We want the guys who won’t get snaps on Friday to have a chance to get some game reps.”
    Last season, Portal played four JV games plus a “jamboree” style half game, but this coming fall Smith has seven JV games scheduled for his younger players to compete in. Smith hopes those extra JV games will help build a continuity between the younger classes and eventually help make better players in the long run.
    But the development of this younger class during the spring run isn’t all falling on the shoulders of Smith. Ware was poignant to mention he too felt a responsibility to set an example for the younger kids early on as Portal prepares for 2017.
    “I can see some of the upperclassmen goofing off a little too much for my taste, so it’s up to me and the other seniors to put a stop to that,” Ware said. “If the younger guys see that they’ll think it’s okay too. We want to change those things around here.”
    Portal fans will get to see their first spring game in seven years on May 19 when they host Southeast Bulloch at 7 p.m.