Talawanda High School's football team is gearing up for its fall season. This year, the student athletes are looking to beat their 2-8 season last year.
For three days a week during the summer, the middle school and high school Talawanda football teams practice. They get up early in the morning, arrive at the football field and condition from 8-10 a.m.
This schedule can be difficult for some of the players involved in 4-H or Future Farmers of America at the Butler County Fair, but head football coach Andy Stuckert still tries to get everyone participating and involved.
"We're just going to try to do what we do and clean that up every single day and become more efficient," Stuckert said.
Official practice begins Aug. 1, but players must practice with helmets and pads twice each before hitting can begin to adjust to the gear.
After a 2-8 season last year for the Talawanda Brave, Stuckert is ready to get the new season started.
Stuckert said the coaching staff focused last year around building the program up, recruiting more players and making changes to the program. That structural work should allow the team to work on finer points and push toward winning games this season.
"We want to start winning football games because there hasn't been a whole lot of winning going on up here," Stuckert said. "And then our hope and our first goal will always be trying to win a conference championship."
The Talawanda Brave are in the Southwest Ohio Conference (SWOC) with three other teams: Harrison, Mount Healthy and Northwest. They will also play against a West Virginia team and other non-conference teams during the season.
Last year the other teams in the SWOC were good, but that just means Talawanda needs to catch up and close the gap, Stuckert said. The team's biggest challenge this year will be its game against Harrison, which Stuckert said made for a difficult game last season.
"I don't want to say that, you know, we have a certain chance to win the conference," he said. "We're just gonna go out and take our swings and see what happens."
Practice with pads, helmets and hitting officially begins Aug. 1. Photos by Taylor Stumbaugh
For Stuckert, this is his second year coaching at Talawanda and he wants to continue building trust. He said he always asks the kids for blind faith, and then himself and the other coaches take it from there.
"It's really tough to go into a school kind of blind and try and change the culture overnight because it's not going to happen," he said. "So we're just doing little things that we think that if we harp on those over time it will turn into something big."
Senior offensive lineman Landon Coffey said the coaching last season was a lot of putting things in place, and he has high hopes for this season.
"[Last year] it was hard to get things going right away," Landon said, "but now that we have the coaching staff for two years in a row, I think we're gonna go pretty far with this coaching staff."
Practices are split into two parts: 45-minutes of drills outside and 45-minutes of weight lifting. Photos by Taylor Stumbaugh
Senior quarterback Cale Leitch said they've put in a lot of work during the off-season and they've got more numbers this year.
"One of the weaknesses though, for us, is that we gotta stay mentally strong during games and during practices," Cale said. "I think with the work we've been putting in everything's gonna work out."
Coffey agreed with Cale's sentiments about the trajectory of the season.
"As a team, I want to go for playoffs," Landon said. "This team hasn't done that in a while, and for myself I just want to perform as best I can so that the Cale stays protected and if I play defense I can get tackles."
This year, the team has busing back and fees were lowered from $600 to $300 a player.
"It's kind of a shame that we got to that (pay to play), but you know, I'm not gonna blame any one person or anyone group for that," Stuckert said. "So it's unfortunate, but these after school activities kids have to have."
Where and when the Brave play this year
The first game is away at 7 p.m. Aug. 23 against the Cleves Taylor Yellowjackets. Here's the rest of the schedule:
8/30 the Brave play at Bishop Fenwick
9/6 the Brave play Eaton at home
9/13 the Brave play at Edgewood
9/20 the Brave play Carroll at home
9/27 the Brave play Shroder Paideia Academy at home
10/11 the Brave play at Harrison (conference game)
10/18 the Brave play at Mt. Healthy (conference game)
10/25 the Brave play at Northwest (conference game)
10/25 the Brave play Wheeling Park at home
