Our football team has a long history of outstanding leadership by our seniors. We believe all of the seniors must assume a leadership role for our team to be at it's best so in a since all of them are captains but it is also important that a smaller group be selected that can conduct the business necessary for a successful team. After meeting with each of next season's seniors and going over our expectations of what is necessary for the team to excel they met last week and elected Peyton Klawinski and Jordan Rodgers to lead them next season. This is high praise for these two young men and we know they accept this responsibility seriously and we are very confident they will do a great job.
Tyler Horn class of 07 will represent the both "U's" this weekend as he competes in the nation's longest running collegiate all-star football game. Tyler has had an outstanding career at the University of Miami and earned post-season honors as 2nd team ACC this season. The East-West Shrine Classic has been running since 1925 and has seen many of it's participants move on to the NFL. Here is a link to their website:
http://www.shrinegame.com/About.aspx
We will start our spring physical development workouts on Monday, January 9. These workouts are each weekday after school from 3:30 to 4:45. All boys not in a fall or spring sport need to attend each day. This takes the place of the boys daily PE class so attendance is mandatory. Any conflicts should be cleared in advance.
Coach Alston
With the 2011 season in the books we updated the school records. You can view these by linking to them through the typelist in the left column of the blog. We have added a few things this year and also changed the format around a little. One of the additions is called Opponent Series History where you can go game by game and see the results vs a particular opponent. Another addition this year is in the Year by Year Result page where we compiled a record by graduating class combining their 10th through 12th grade years for those guys who love to argue which group was best.
Remember that in the early years we may not have a history of certain records and we welcome any corrections or additions.
Last night was a fun evening as we put a wrap on the 2011 football season. A special thanks to Trey Jordan, class of 1982, for providing the evening meal. Also thanks to Barry Ray for being our emcee, Mr. Haguewood for his support even as sick as he was, and Beth Taylor for pulling it all together.
As I shared with the boys we have enjoyed a really good season and became a very good team playing probably one of the toughest schedules ever. Counting the 2 teams we scrimmaged in pre-season 12 of the 13 teams advanced to the play-offs. 2 of those teams advanced to the semi-finals in their division (CBHS and Ridgeway), and three played in State Championship games with two (Ensworth and Olive Branch) winning. At Hoover this summer in 7on7 we played 2 teams who have already won the state (Fayetteville Ark, and Prattville Al.) and 3 who have advanced to the championship (Kenton Oh, Grayson Ga, and Allentown Central Catholic Pa). Our team was certainly tested this year.
Besides the 8-4 and State Semi-Final run for our varsity team our 9th grade team finished 7-0 and the JV team went 5-0. This was accomplished due to the hard work of our players and coaches.
We gave out some awards last night. FIrst we handed out several position accountablility awards based on our production evaluations of the guys each Friday night.
Offense Line: Britt Colcolough & Ben Still
Offense Receiver: Devin Perry
Offense Back: Shane Tucker
Defense Line: Nicholas Vergos
Defense LB'er: Peyton Klawaski
Defense Outside LB'er: James Prather
Defense Back: Alex Dale
Special Teams Awards went to Toby Baker and Gary Wunderlich
The Steve Minken "Headhunter Award" for most tackles went to Peyton Klawanski
The Slobberknocker Award for best hit went to James Prather
The players selected the winners of the following awards:
Holiday Ham "Do Right Award" - Garrott Graham
Dan Griffin Spirit Award - Garrott Graham & Braydon Phillips
W. S. Roberts Most Valuable Award - Alex Dale & Shane Tucker
Thanks again to a great group of guys who made up this team. They put much effort and enthusiasm into this year and leave with much to be proud of.
GO OWLS
We will have a brief meeting today to get all of the equipment picked up and the locker room cleaned. This should take no more than an hour. For those boys moving on to another sport after today they need to check with those coaches. The boys that are remaining in football need to rest up and focus on school work until after exams.
Congratulations to Ensworth for a well played game on Friday. They took advantage of their opportunities and made the plays both offensively and defensively that they needed. In a season where we have had the task of playing against many very good running backs I think I can safely say that Corn Elder is the best we saw this year. But he is not a one man team and the rest of the Tigers also played very well especially on defense when we threatened to score. Much of what we did not accomplish was due to their good play.
The radio crew selected one Southern Sun Player of the Game going with Nicholas Vergos who was our leading tackler on defense. Nicholas finishes his career here at MUS with a very well played game.
While we are all disappointed in the outcome of the game I certainly can not fault the effort of our players and coaches. We left it all on the field but it was just not our night.
In many ways it seems such a short time ago we were preparing for our opening game of the season with Ensworth knowing they would have a great team and would provide us a strong test. That they did. Now almost 3 months later we meet again in the state semi-finals. Ensworth has had a great season currently lining up at 11-1. We all know the cast of characters for them with the leading role going to Corn Elder. On offense he is supported by a good line and the throwing combination of Andrew Bowers to Cory Batey. Defensively Elder and Batey give Ensworth a formidable secondary but the DL of Cody Pack, Shomari White, and Michael Sawyers have also played a very important role. One of the top defenders in the league is Keshonn Carter who plays outside linebacker.
Our focus this week is playing the type of game that allows us the chance to win this week. Nothing we do will change the result of the first game so while there are some things to learn from it both teams have grown a lot since that night in August. I believe our team has had a great week of preparation and that we are ready to play our best game of the year.
GO OWLS!!
Our team played very well the past Friday against a McCallie team that also played very well. Our ability to make some big plays on offense and to limit those big plays by McCallie especially in the running game was the key to victory in my opinion. As we said in the game preview McCallie was the top rushing team in our league and we held them to 124 yards for the game which was a huge victory for our defensive team. This was also one of our best nights of the season on offense as we averaged almost 10 yards a play.
The SouthernSun Players of the game as selected by our media group were Toby Baker and Matt Bolton. Toby probably had his best game of the year and it could not have come at a better time. Matt was the key to our defense stopping the run and he finished the game with 18 tackles.
We do not hand out Buzzard Player awards during the play-offs but I would like to give a shout out to Darien Bradburn a 9th grade running back who did a great job all week impersonating #24 from McCallie. In fact all of our guys on the scout teams continue to be integral to our success on Fridays.
So we know move on to the Semi-Finals and face Ensworth. More about that game later.
Our Quarter-final game with McCallie promises to be a very tough contest for us. McCallie's record of 5-5 is very deceiving. They were ahead of Ensworth going into the 4th quarter, had a chance to beat Baylor on the last play and missed a last second FG to beat MBA. The only game they did not have a chance to win in the 4th quarter was the Brentwood Academy game. Their bad luck seem to change last week when the beat BGA on a last second TD pass.
On offense McCallie leads the league in rushing averaging 267 yards a game behind the efforts of #24 Daniel McClure who is 3rd in the league individually at 147 yards a game. Their option attack is directed by #4 QB Trent Lusk who accounts for 138 yards a game in total offense. They average over 30 points a game. I think this will be one of our toughest test of the year because of their disciplined attack. The strength of our team all year has been our defense and we will need to be at our best.
Defensively McCallie is led by LB'er #17 Hayden Cronan who has been in on 88 tackles including 11 TFL's and 5 sacks. Other leaders are #21 Eric Wolfe at OLB and safeties #26 Brian Viscomi and #15 Harry Phillips. On the DL #79 Josh Bandy has been a solid player. Their defense has struggled at times this year because of injuries as only 7 of their starters have played in more than 7 games. We expect to see everyone this week.
It has been a while since we played McCallie in football, actually going back to 2003. Our schools have had a very healthy rivalry in lacrosse over the last few years and many of the same kids play both for them as they do for us.
Our team has had a great week of practice and I believe we are ready to play well. We need our fans to make our home field advantage pay off. Come early and be loud!! GO OWLS