SIDELL — The Salt Fork football team seem to always have a balance of senior leaders and young players ready to step in.
This season is no exception.
“That is going to be the norm for us to ask for our sophomores and freshmen. As it is become common to have 30 kids on the roster, it is all hands on deck,” Salt Fork coach Les Seifert said. “We seem to have thin sets of numbers for the last 5-6 years, so I give our coaching staff a lot of credit for making something out of nothing at times and we seem to make work what we have.”
There will be six seniors on the team: Jamison Chambliss, Blake Trimmell, Bennett Smoot, Trae Wilson, Mousa Abudayya and Travor Boyd.
“We have a really strong senior class. I have six seniors who are strong weight room kids and they all start,” Siefert said. “All six of those kids will be important to us this year and they have played since they were sophomores. Four of those seniors are on the line and all four of them started since they were sophomores and that’s our strength.”
“Chambliss is probably our best football player and we are excited about what kind of a season he is going to have. He is going to play fullback and our middle linebacker and he will be a big part of the offense and defense.”
With the line built up of mostly starters, it makes the running game the Storm wants to run go smoothly.
“We like to run the ball and possess the football and we can’t do that without a good offensive line,” Seifert said. “We are undersized, but that’s normal for us. We are rarely bigger than people we play and being undersized is an obstacle that we are used to dealing with.”
“We already have a lot of team chemistry we built up,” Chambliss said. “We knew our strength and we knew what to get better, It is great to have a lot of linemen and it is helpful to run behind them. It is pretty awesome. It has been night an day because everyone has put on 10 or 15 pounds of muscle and it makes a big difference.”
A major change in offense is at quarterback, where sophomore Weston Church steps in for junior Zayden Bromley, who is now a running back.
“When you have to move kids around, he fits us better as a running back this year,” Seifert said. “I have a thing for sophomore quarterbacks it seems. He started for us in defense last year and is a tough kid. We are excited about him taking over that spot.”
“It’s been a good change,” Chambliss said. “Zayden has done really well for us at running back and Weston has a good arm on him and a great mind for a quarterback. It is like he has been quarterbacking for a long time with how he is playing, he’s a good athlete and does a good job for us.”
As for the rest of the underclassmen, Siefert says that the potential of a few will help in a major way.
“We have a junior in Cale Boyd, who was a two-way starter as a freshman and he is back and he adds experience as well,” Siefert said. “We have a kid that started both ways for us in sophomore Carter Lindsey that we think is going to be a great football player. We are excited for Carter and he is going to play tight end and linebacker for us. We expect him to be a big part of what we do on both sides of the ball.”
The Storm starts the season on the road in their first two games. Friday’s opener is against Clifton Central and next week, Salt Fork goes to Westville.
“The conference is good this year. I think Georgetown has gotten better and Oakwood is really talented and Westville is Westville,” Siefert said. “I think anyone who wants a chance of winning conference has to go through them (Westville). We start the season at Clifton and that’s going to be a very tall task for us. Our first games are on the road against Clifton and Westville and we will find out how tough we are pretty dang quick.”
Chambliss looks at the two games as a chance to get some payback from losses from last season.
“We are looking forward to start at Clifton, where a lot of teams would not,” Chambliss said. “We have some unfinished business with them, we had a lot of injuries when we played them and we still had a pretty solid game against them. We are going to be healthy and staring off fresh against them is going to be a big help. They lost some guys and we didn’t quite lose as much as they did so we are looking to get one back for sure. Everyone knew they (Westville) were on a big level and they lost a lot of guys and we didn’t lose as much and I think we can get back at them as well.”