Bloomingdale Bulls Go Down Fighting at 7 on 7 Tournament

7 on 7 football is when the quarterback and six running backs and receivers take on seven defensive backs and linebackers in a game of two-hand-touch football. It's very much like a pickup game of football. These usually occur inter-squad but Florida has exploded with 7 on 7 tournaments during the summer.

"It's great. Our youth gets experience running our offensive and defensive schemes," said Head Coach John Booth.

The Bulls went into The BCP 9 Route 7 on 7 Tournament on Friday without their starting quarterback. Cody Crouse could not make the first day and wide receiver, Adam Posateri, stood in for them.

They opened up pool play with eventual tournament finalist, Wharton, and fell 24-12. This was not a good start but considering Wharton laid 30+ points on every other opponent besides Plant, there's a silver lining.

Plant City beat them 24-14, which is close in 7 on 7 competition.

They played Middleton very tough but could not find the end-zone but once. The Bulls fell 12-7 in that one.

Finally, the Bulls got it going and beat Wesley Chapel in their fourth pool game, 13-6.

They entered seeded play on Saturday toward the bottom of the field, 15th out of the 16 teams. They faced a Wharton squad again and again held them under 30 points. They fell 24-13 but, with Cody Crouse present playing quarterback, they looked sharper on offense.

They faced Wesley Chapel again in the second game on Saturday as they tried to negotiate the one-loss bracket. They thumped Wesley Chapel 33-19 and moved on to Tampa Bay Tech.

In their final game of the tournament, Minnifield caught almost everything thrown his direction. He caught the first touchdown and conversion. However, TB Tech scored right back  to even things up. The Bulls would score again off the highlight play of the tournament when Kameron Faile darted in after a tipped ball intended for Minnifield and outran the TB Tech defense for a touchdown against his former team. TB Tech would eliminate Bloomingdale from the tournament 24-13 but it was far from a negative experience for the Bulls.

"Two of our three linebackers are new this year. It was so important for them to have this experience," said Booth. "On offense, our young receivers caught the ball well, developed some consistency."

"Cody threw the ball well," he continued.

The Bulls were not exactly playing with a full roster either. Aside from Crouse being out the first day, lock-down corner Gerard Trott was unavailable the second day.

The highlight of the tournament was, not surprisingly, Sean Minnifield. There are no recorded stats for the tournament but Minnifield was all over the place, gobbling up underneath routes for first downs and going vertical for longer touchdowns.

He came down hard twice and was hit pretty hard on a crossing route and had to be attended to by the BCP medical staff but he would not be removed from the competition.

"Yeah, you can't take him off the field, he's just that kind of player," said Booth.