By Drew Herron - NT Sports Editor / Aug. 30, 2013
ATLANTIC – After months of toil in the weight room, off-season workouts, summer 7-on-7 drills, preseason camp and fall practice, the Trojans enter this week’s season opener starving to play live competition.
That opportunity will present itself Friday night at Clarinda, and Atlantic head coach Nick Ross says the Trojans are itching to play under the lights.
“We are to the point right now where we’ve grown tired of hitting each other, and we’re looking forward to facing the competition Friday night,” coach Ross says. “Friday night is going to be a good test for us of where we are, and where we need to continue to go.”
The Trojans are coming off a 5-4 season a year ago, but will need to replace the bulk of their starting lineup on both sides of the ball.
Atlantic held its annual preseason scrimmage last week at the Trojan Bowl, and it allowed the coaching staff another chance to evaluate what it has, and what it needs.
Some positives that the Trojans took away from the scrimmage was ball security, and generally sound implementation with their blocking schemes. An area to work on, Ross says, is better execution on defense.
With so many new players to varsity, starting roles are still a bit fluid, and competition for spots at many positions could roll into the district season.
At the beginning of the week, Atlantic set its depth chart, but the coaching staff emphasized that those names in those starting roles are merely penciled in, rather than set in stone.
“It’s still going to be an audition for many of our guys and positions on our team,” coach Ross says. “I anticipate we will have position battles going on for at least the first couple weeks of the season. We really need to see who is going to take the field Friday night and take care of business when the other team wants to win just as bad as you do.”
On offense, coach Ross says ball security will continue to be a top priority for a unit that is young and inexperienced as a whole. On top of that, Ross says he is counting on the offense to ensure they do the little things right. The little things that can go wrong during the first game of the season, problems like lining up incorrectly, proper hand-offs, meshes, and firing off on the correct snap counts.
“I’m looking for a real clean game as far as handling those areas,” coach Ross says. “Outside of that, we need to execute our schemes. We’re trying to keep it simple because we are young. The guys should have a good idea of what our schemes are, now it’s just a matter of doing it when the bullets are flying.”
Clarinda is coming off a 1-8 season a year ago, but the program has been energized by the arrival of a new coach. Mark Schlib, a 1991 graduate of CHS and former Cardinals quarterback, returns to his alma mater, having had significant success coaching at the prep level. Schlib most recently coached at Oskaloosa with head coaching jobs at Sigourney and Perry before that.
That might mean one can disregard what the Cards did last year, and ponder what they might do this season.
“Clarinda is a scary team for a number of reasons,” coach Ross says. “They’ve got a new coach who has had a lot of success and he has taken teams deep into the playoffs before. I am sure they are going to have new schemes, and we don’t know entirely what they are going to run. There are adjustments that are going to have to be made during the course of the game.
“Outside of that, they’ve got some very big kids who can block and move. Up front, they are going to present some very real challenges.”
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