High school football coaches would love to start a season with everybody back in their accustomed positions.
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High school football coaches would love to start a season with everybody back in their accustomed positions. Seldom do they get their wish, especially when you are talking small school football. As the saying goes–sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
Last spring’s graduation dictated several personnel and positional changes for the Rock Port Blue Jays and head coach Del Stoltenberg. The loss of second team, all-conference runningbacks Trent Shineman and Brandon Leseberg has forced the Jays to move all-conference receiver Kyle Rice into the backfield, where he joins senior Chas Volker, who started only at linebacker a season ago.
“I don’t care how many they graduated,” Gallatin head coach Mark Cole remarked, as his team prepared for the Jays. “They play hard and are well-coached.”
Junior quarterback Micah Meyerkorth returns for Rock Port. Meyerkorth and Rice were members of last spring’s Class 1 second place 4×400-meter relay team and fifth place 4×100-meter relay team. Individually, Meyerkorth finished second in the state 200-meter dash and third in the 100- meter dash. Rice took eighth in the 100-meter race. Look for the track meet to continue Friday night on the GHS football field.
“They are going to run some fullback dives and traps leading the way for Rice,” Coach Cole said, “but they’ll try to attack the perimeter as much as they can,” he added. “That’s where we are going to have to be prepared to stop them.”
The Blue Jays have retained their overall team speed but are less-experienced up front after losing Adam Meyerkorth, Regan Griffin, Cory Stanton and Jason Carpenter to graduation.
The Blue Jays come to Gallatin looking for their first victory of the 2003 season after dropping a 20-14 overtime decision to Avoca, Ia., a Class 2-size school.
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One thing I forgot to mention in last week’s GRC football preview that is timely to talk about this week.
Friday night’s Princeton at Hamilton game promises to be a knock-down-drag-out between two teams and two coaches who want to be successful running the football this season. The Tiger running game, featuring three 1,000-yard rushers, needs no introduction. Brett Cavanah, Nathan Craft and Brandon Parsons are going to carry the load.
The 2003 Hornets, on the other hand, have more depth in the backfield than any Hamilton team Dave Fairchild has been associated with. Fairchild may go all season without a featured back, though senior Shawn McGee showed a good combination of speed and power at the jamboree. Unlike some other teams in the GRC, Hamilton didn’t have to shuffle people around in order to fill backfield spots. The Hornet senior backfield also features Jason Ruffcorn, Marc Sanderson, Matt Ayers and transfer Jamie Hanson.
Princeton is considered the favorite Friday night based on its strong cast of returning players from last season’s Class 1 semifinal team…but there’s one thing that needs to be said. Tiger coach Dave Cavanah has beaten Hornet coach Dave Fairchild only once, and that was long ago.
Cavanah used to be the head coach at South Harrison back in the 80s and in every year but one Fairchild put a smaller, less-talented team up against the Bulldogs…and won. They weren’t dominating victories–maybe one point one year and two points the next–but Fairchild always came out on top. Granted, Hornet teams worked hard for those victories, but often at the end of the game they left you wondering just how they pulled it off. Cavanah’s only win over Fairchild came in 1981, Fairchild’s first season at Hamilton after coming down from South Harrison.
Give Princeton the edge for experience and starting lineup. Hamilton has an edge in home field, depth and the coaching factor.
The Tigers rolled up a whopping 444 yards on the ground against Putnam County. Craft led the attack with 173 yards, followed by Cavanah with 170 and Parsons with 108. Princeton gave up 231 passing yards to the Midgets only because they couldn’t run on the Tigers (23 yards).
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The application made last week by Polo and Braymer for admission into the Grand River Conference will be much talked about and discussed through the remaining days of this month. After hearing from school officials from those two Central River Conference schools at the GRC meeting (made up of school administrators and athletic directors), the matter has been turned over to a committee comprised of one school official from each of the original 9-member schools that’s Albany, Gallatin, Hamilton, King City, Maysville, Princeton, South Harrison, Stanberry and Worth County. Hamilton athletic director Troy Ford is the chairman of the committee.
As most of you know there are 12 Northwest Missouri schools with a stake in GRC athletics and activities. King City, Worth County and Stanberry participate in everything but football and are full voting members. Rock Port and Tarkio participate in conference football and wrestling. South Holt is also a wrestling participant in the GRC. They vote in conference meetings on issues relating only to 11-man football or wrestling.
The committee formed after the Polo and Braymer presentation will submit a recommendation to the superintendent of each of the 9 original membership schools by Oct. 1 so those supers can take that recommendation to their October school board meetings. The issue will be voted on at the next conference meeting, Nov. 12, in Bethany. One GRC school official told me that the current league membership is in no hurry to change the status quo, meaning that Polo and Braymer aren’t going to get in. That’s my read on the situation. I don’t think there will be enough support to let those two in.
Football participation numbers are probably still pretty low at Stanberry, but maybe Worth County and King City should be asked to return to 11-man football or leave the GRC in all activities. Right now those three schools are living the best of both worlds. They have their Highway 275 Conference membership in 8-man football and GRC membership in all other sports and are allowed full voting powers in GRC meetings.
I would venture a guess that since 1992, Worth County, at least, has consistently put more players on the practice field every year than Princeton, which remains solidly in the 11-man football ranks. Heck, the PHS Tigers have less than 30 out for football this year and they are one of the top teams in the league. Sure, Princeton has taken plenty of lumps over the last 10 to15 years, but the Tigers have proudly maintained their position in the conference. When Worth County won the conference football crown in 1984 under Rob Bowers, I bet switching to 8-man football was the farthest thing from the minds of Grant City school patrons. What member of the original 11-man football fraternity hasn’t experience a football famine at least once since 1990?
Maybe low participation numbers warranted an 8-man program in the beginning, but I’d like to think that if I lived in Grant City and my football teams had won 80 percent (that’s just a guess) of their football games over the last 10 years and were getting 30 to 40 kids out, I’d like to see what we could do back in 11-man ball.