With a year of varsity experience under his belt, Kearns' J.R. Finai feels more confident heading into his junior season. He has seen how fast the game is at a varsity level and being the starting quarterback as a sophomore, he knows what it takes to be a leader.
He's excited for the next two months of preparation and he feels he's ready. He just wants to start off on the right foot but in order to do that, he needed to get a couple things out of the way.
"I had two foot surgeries [in the offseason]," Finai said. "I had to sit out the last three games of basketball and it was a tough situation but it would make it possible for me to be ready in time [for football]."
Finai had the surgeries to correct hammertoe in both feet. It affected him last year but he played through the pain. Once the football season ended, the throbbing in his feet intensified. For the past five months, one foot or the other has been in a boot and he has been on crutches.
But he's close to being back at full strength and says he's "at 75 percent." He hopes to bee fully healthy by mid-July.
Read more about it in next week's edition of the West Valley City Close-Ups.

--Maggie Thach

In response to young Tony Jones: It's never too early for football. That's partly because there's such great interest and partly because preps don't have much else going on over the summer. So. Here's what's going to be going on in July:

Prep live blogs
We'll be starting the week of July 6th. Make your voice heard by commenting or sending an e-mail to tribpreps@sltrib.com. What time works for you? What day?

Prep two-a-days
Starting on July 6th, the Trib will begin its annual tour of prep football practices from around the state. In all, we'll profile 70 teams. We're just trying to figure out who's practicing before then. Drop us a line if your team is practicing before the 4th.

-- The Boss

So here we sit in late June. The summer has just started, the official beginning to the high school football season is still almost a solid two months away, and we as a staff are in the throes of winding down from the baseball season that just passed a few short weeks ago.
The reality is, however, that high school football in this state is already ramping up. There are camps going on. 7-on-7 competitions heating up. BYU is holding its non-padded football camp as we speak, and coaches are already talking about who are the favorites.
And it's not even July yet.
Currently, the talk in Class 5A centers around just how much talent will be on display this coming season. From Alta, to Bingham, to Cottonwood, to Davis, to Skyline, to Pleasant Grove, to Syracuse, to Riverton, every week is shaping up to be a war. From Algernen Brown, to Dallas Lloyd, to Tanner Banks, to Harvey Langi, there is plenty of star power.
So is it too early to start talking about it? We at the Tribune say no.
That's why we're starting our two-a-day series in the next few weeks. That's why we're blogging on this stuff weekly. We simply feel, just like college and the pros, that football is becoming its own monster in terms of coverage.
Tony Jones

Today, Kyle Collinsworth, the Provo star, and the unquestioned top rising senior in Utah, will hop on a plane and take a flight to Charlottsville Virginia.
Tomorrow through Sunday, the 6-foot-7 guard will test himself against the best players in the country.
Collinsworth is a part of the NBA top 100 camp, which, since the death of the Nike and ABC camps, has emerged as the premier summer camp in the country. This year, the camp is particularly stacked with talent, as 49 of the top 50 players listed by Scout.com will be in attendance.
Collinsworth is the second Utah player to attend the camp in consecutive years, with former Lone Peak and rising BYU freshman Tyler Haws attending the invite only camp last season.
And while Haws did okay, he did struggle with the athleticism of the camp. In those terms, Collinsworth may be better suited to make an impact, as the strength of his game is predicated on creating shots for others and getting to the basket off the dribble.
Collinsworth is currently ranked as the 71st best player in the country, according to Scout. His stock, quite simply, could go through the roof if he has a good week. As it is, BYU's unquestioned top target in the class of 2010 has plenty of offers from Utah to Virginia to Washington State.
Tony Jones

The girls' basketball program at LCA will be headed into a different direction with Shara Fernandes at the helm. Fernandes was named the new girls' basketball coach on Wednesday. Fernandes brings a wealth of knowledge to the positon, having coached soccer and basketball at Northridge.
Besides being a seasoned coach, she's also an accomplished athlete. She was a three-sport athlete at Ben Lomond High and a member of the first women's soccer team at Weber State.
Fernandes will take over immediately and guide workouts over the summer.
"Shara knows how to build an athletic program; she has done it before," said LCA boys' basketball coach Bobby Porter. "She has great communication skills and relates to players. She is a high energy person who will bring a sesne of excitement to the program."

--Maggie Thach

Guy MacKay, former coach at Taylorsville high, meet Tubby Smith. Tubby, meet Guy. You two have a lot in common.
Smith, as you may or may not know, coached the Kentucky Wildcats to a national championship. He took his team to final eight's. He took his team to sweet 16's. For 10 years, Tubby Smith won consistently. He won without fanfare, and his teams were always competitive against the best the nation had to offer.
Problem was, for Tubby, his name was not Rick. As in Pitino, the man who turned the Wildcats into a dynasty, and because of that, Tubby Smith was all but run out of town, resigning his post two years ago to take the job with the Minnesota Golden Gophers.
So where, do you ask, does MacKay come in? It's simple. His name wasn't Steve Cramblitt, the former Taylorsville coach who won multiple state championships during his tenure with the Warriors. He moved on to Juan Diego, where he won a title this year, in dominating fashion.
MacKay won three region titles in his five years as the head coach. He also took his team to the state title game in 2007. But for a Taylorsville program that's used to winning titles, apparently, this wasn't enough. That's why MacKay was fired last week. For his part, MacKay knew that this wasn't easy, and he knew the fan base and the expectations would run high.
"It's not like I got hit over the head with a sledgehammer," he said. Still, this was the first year where the program truly lagged. Indeed, the Warriors got off to a 4-11 start to the season, and had to win nine consecutive games just to make the playoffs. I thought that would've been enough to earn him another year at the helm, especially since the talent that Cramblitt got hasn't trickled down to MacKay. The administration thought otherwise. MacKay wants to get back into coaching. He told me as much. He's going to stay with the school as a teacher, and he'll continue to coach in the younger ranks. But for a man who has been a part of the Taylorsville baseball program since 1995, this had to be a disappointing end.

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Just as MacKay's firing was disappointing, Judge coach Jeff Myaer's decision to step down for a year was perplexing. Myaer, the head coach in baseball and a football assistant, said that he wants to spend more time with his family. His son, Zach, will be a senior next season, and that played a big role. Still, Judge baseball is a talented program who should compete for titles for years to come. I wonder, if Myaer does indeed return in 2011, what it will do to the continuity of the program?
Tony Jones

The season hasn't been over for a week, and we already have what will be a few coaching changes, both affecting schools down south.
Chris Cooper, who stepped down from Mountain View at the end of last season, will get back into coaching, taking over the new Westlake High in Saratoga Springs. Cooper, who coached the Bruins for 10 years, and who never had a losing season in that decade, says that proximity led him to step down from Mountain View and that same proximity led him to get back into the coaching game.
"My son is seven and Mountain View is 30 minutes from my house," Cooper said. "I wanted to work with him this year with baseball. I didn't want to wake up 20 years from now and regret not working with him. Westlake's going to be five minutes from my house so my son can live at the ballpark."
"I'm excited about the change. It's a big school, and there's a big population. I really think that we can get some good kids to come through there in the next 10-15 years."
The other change will be Gary Miner, who is leaving Orem to go coach at Maple Mountain, a new school that will be pulling kids from Springville and Spanish Fork, much like Syracuse pulled from schools up north. Miner's been at Orem for 17 years as a head coach.
"This is a good challenge," Miner said. "We're going to be starting from scratch, and it's going to be fun putting a competitive team together."
Tony Jones