Indians Need To Play Somebody

Clark County Varsity Football Coach Matt Smith had these comments concerning the 2007 Indians, "Last year the Indians had a record of 10-2 and went as far as the state quarter-finals. From that 2006 team we lost a quarterback, a pretty good chunk of receivers, and all of our linebackers.  So these are the areas that we have been working on in finding athletes who will step up and fill those key positions. We do have a good core of athletes up front on both sides of the ball. The five starters on the offensive line are very solid. The coaching staff is working and looking on bringing some kids along on a rotation basis. However, because of how solid we were last year, there was opportunity late in some ballgames for those who may not have been starters to see some varsity action.
  Among the positive things that we have to build on is the return of All-Conference & All-District Running Back junior Javis Vineyard.
  As far as replacing our All-State quarterback from last year (Brock Egley), we have Ethan Allen who is a junior and has as good of skills as anybody we have ever had.  Once he gets a few games under his belt, he will be fine. Receiver wise we lost three starters, but we have Colt Sommers who is a big target, and Bryan Plenge who saw significant playing time last year. We also have Rob Shutte, Matt Morrow, and Ethan Horton who were very successful on the JV level last year. These athletes just need some varsity play.
As far as linebackers go,  we lost some all district and conference players. We do have Erick Arnold coming back who is our strongest kid in that position right now and we are putting a lot on his shoulders early.  During the first couple weeks we will probably be rotating five or six athletes in those positions to find out what we have.
  Our practices have been going well, and we had a good camp and our "two a days" have gone well, we just need to play somebody. And it’s really tough to see what we have in some positions until we play a game. There are always surprises in the game. There will be athletes which will surprise you in a game by the way they step up and answer the bell and then you will discover that there may be another athlete who is just not ready to play on the varsity level. Our first feedback will come from the jamboree when we face off against 3A schools.
  As far as the Conference goes, I feel that it’s a very balanced Conference with a lot of schools on the verge of cracking into the upper tier of schools. Historically over the past 5 to 7 years the top tier of schools in the conference have been Clark, Brookfield, and Putnam. I and the rest of the team are certainly not taking anyone for granted. But if you are looking at our schedule, our first big headline team is week four when we face Brookfield which will be a pretty stiff challenge for us at Brookfield. But at least two of the first three teams we face early in the season will be drastically improved over their teams from last year. Those teams were very young last year and a little green early in the season, but improved as the season progressed. But I see a lot of teams on the verge of stepping up and playing anyone tough. And whether it’s warranted or not there is a lot of preseason hype because of the success over the past five or so years, Clark has received a lot of attention and that’s like wearing a bull’s-eye on your jersey as far as other teams wanting to knock you off. But each year, you lose athletes from the previous year, so that’s the challenge."