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With his Columbus East High School football players headed off the football field toward lunch, head coach Bob Gaddis stood at the goal line, watched them leave and nodded his head with a sense of pride.

“I think they bought into what we told them,” Gaddis said after his team’s first official practice of the season Monday morning.

Gaddis, who is beginning his 12th season at East, his 34th as a head coach and his 36th as a coach, obviously had a touch of baseball spring training enthusiasm affecting him. Yet, he insisted that this first practice felt just a bit different.

“I’m as excited as I’ve been in a long time,” he said. “We have a young group that is very coachable.”

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