With a summer full of practices under their belts with minimal contact, the players were itching to dress in full game pads.

For the first time since their regional game Nov. 15 at Gibson Southern, Brownstown Central played full-contact football Friday.

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The Braves put on their annual Red/Black towel scrimmage at Blevins Memorial Stadium, with the freshman, junior varsity and varsity teams all taking the gridiron.

Prior to the start of the game, patrons brought towels and soap to donate to the team.

“Basically, for our locker rooms, we would like to provide towels and soap for the guys,” Braves coach Reed May said. “It’s IHSAA rules that you need to use plain white towels during games. It helps ensure that we have the accommodations for the kids.”

The three Braves squads rotated onto the field, alternating every 20 plays.

“We intermixed our first and second teams,” May said. “We were then able to get our freshman and junior varsity teams some work in also. We alternated every 10 plays between the black and white (varsity) teams on offense and defense. Then 10 plays JV against freshman and vise-versa.”

May said the event is part of the build-up process to the season.

“I think some of the kids feel really rusty,” May said. “We will watch the film, and the thing we need to ask ourselves is ‘What can we do to get better between now and Jennings County?’ Every week we just want to get better until sectional time.”

With 26 freshman players, the Braves will field a freshman team this season after not having enough players last year.

“At our level, you see some classes have a lot of kids while others don’t,” May said. “It also depends on how many boys are in the class. If we didn’t have a freshman team we would have almost 50 kids on the JV team. We always put together a freshman schedule just in case we have enough.”

May said that he wants his team to now focus on their home scrimmage against Jennings County on Friday.

“You always have different dynamics,” May said of the varsity team. “The kids seem to like each other, they’re tight-nit. What you’re really looking for at this time is the cohesiveness of the team.

“I think that any time you have that camaraderie you have the opportunity to be a good team. We had all summer, but now is the time to fine-tune things.”

The Braves varsity team likely will play two drives before the JV finishes out the contest with the Panthers.

The Braves open their regular season Aug. 19 at Paoli.