They’re the top Dogs: Claysburg-Kimmel football embracing favorite’s role in ICC North
ICC Football Media Day Notes
Trending
LOYSBURG -- Last season, Claysburg-Kimmel's high school football team surprised a lot of people by winning the Inter-County Conference's North Division.
This year, the Bulldogs won't be sneaking up on anyone and were the focus of many teams at Wednesday's ICC Media Day at Northern Bedford High School.
"We have to find the hunger to continue to get better," C-K coach Chuck Kassick said. "These kids wanted to get better every week (last season). They played hard and saw that brass ring in front of them. It became a reality that they could reach. Now the expectation is that we should reach that. There will be a target on us, because the year we had last year and that we have a lot of kids coming back. It's no secret. We have a veteran team coming back on both sides of the ball. We have to find a way internally to grow that hunger to be better than we were last year. We have to compete against ourselves as well as everyone else this year."
Claysburg-Kimmel was picked to win the ICC North again this year by area coaches in the Altoona Mirror's Blitz magazine, and senior quarterback Mason Campagna is front and center on the cover.
"Anything less than a conference championship or at least competing for one -- we have to look at ourselves and ask if we did enough," Kassick said. "We have set our expectations extremely high. We'd like to get to Mansion Park and have a chance to play for a District 6 championship. If that's not your goal every year, even if you're not a good team, why are you coaching? You want to push your kids as far as you can. Usually that starts in November and December of the previous year for nine or 10 months. Our goal is to get there. They want to make our community proud."
Claysburg-Kimmel has a new football facility after playing all of its games away from town only a few years ago and packed the stadium for its games last year.
"I think in this area of Pennsylvania, football season really sets the tone for the school year," Kassick said. "As a principal as well as the head coach in football, I want to see positivity. I want to see a good culture within the building. That starts in the fall. When you get stakeholders, community members, fans and alumni to come in and have pride in the product, word spreads. The best way to spread anything is word of mouth. When people come and see what we're doing, how we play and how hard our kids work, it's growing from the bottom up."
That also includes starting work on developing the youngest future Bulldogs.
"This week, we're holding an elementary mini camp for three days," Kassick said. "We have our varsity kids running the drills and installing plays and things like that with our elementary coaches and players. They don't want to see me and our coaches holding clipboards. They want to see those kids in the jerseys. They want to wear the helmets. Having them grow and be involved with those kids at a young age is what is spurning this growth from top to bottom."
Rambler resources
Windber won a District 5 Class 1A championship last year and added a new training facility shortly after the season that has helped the development of this year's team.
"With the addition of Iron Horse that the school district bought us last September, we were able to do a lot of things all winter," Windber coach Matt Grohal said. "We did 7-on-7s during the winter against local schools, and we felt like that gave us a head start. The summer has been great. We got a lot of commitment from the kids, and that's the expectation at Windber. The kids buy into what we preach."
Windber plays its toughest games down the stretch, but the Ramblers expect to be a better team in late October than August.
"We lost a great nucleus of players," Grohal said. "But I have a lot of guys returning with experience and a really good incoming freshman class, so we'll be a little vanilla at the beginning of the year -- but I think as the season goes on, we'll get better and hopefully we can get back in the playoffs and contend for a district title."
New coaches
Glendale will have a new head coach this high school football season, but he isn't a new head coach at the school.
Chase Hill, who recently resigned as the Glendale girls basketball coach, is taking over for successful former coach Dave "Spank" Trexler.
"I coached football at Northern Cambria for four or five years before I coached basketball," Hill said. "When (the girls job) opened up, it was a good opportunity to keep coaching when I wasn't coaching football at Glendale. Once the football position opened, I had to go back to football, because that's what I enjoy and what I want to do."
Hill said there will be plenty of changes in Flinton.
"We have been changing up the way we run our offense, defense and special teams," Hill said. "We're getting everyone used to the new terminology and playcalling. The guys have been showing up, doing a good job with it and everyone seems to understand it. I think we're in a good place going into heat acclimation."
Hill's focus will be getting the ball to his best players.
"We have athletes, and we're trying to get them the ball however we can," Hill said. "We're going to try and stay balanced as much as possible, but we'll be getting it to our guys and letting them make the plays."
Two other ICC North teams also changed coaches -- Southern Huntingdon and Curwensville.
"I got hired in March, and we did training and conditioning after school and some 7-on-7s in July with the Huntingdon crew," new Southern Huntingdon coach Fred Foster said. "We did drills this summer, and we're still putting our staff together trying to find a few coaches here and there and getting to know the kids."
Foster, who replaced Northern Bedford graduate Aaron Batzel, said he will concentrate on running the ball and fundamentals.
"We kept some of the formations in place from last year -- a little bit of the spread offense," Foster said. "But we're definitely probably going to be a little more run-game oriented with a little play action. We'll be more aggressive on defense with a 4-4 style and base cover-three. We'll work on basic fundamentals and getting after and tackling people."
Brad Sopic is the new coach for Curwensville, the only District 9 member of the ICC. He took over for Jim Thompson.
"I have never been around it before," Sopic said. "In my prior experience, it was always in the (Allegheny Mountain League), so this is my first experience with all of these teams."
The Tide play at the 2A level and have a roster around 30 players.
"We want to be balanced on offense and be physical and tackle well," Sopic said. "We want to get after it on defense and play to the best of our ability."