At Lucas, the football season starts without the single snap of a football.
“When we go to camp at the Ohio Northern University, our seniors lead the entire team in setting goals for the season. Once the goals are set, every athlete and coach signs their names on their set of goals, committing to those goals,” said the Lucas Cubs’ head football coach Scott Spitler, “We as coaches commit to push them to reach those goals, and they as players commit to doing what is needed to accomplish those goals.”
Senior captain, Kolton Bernhardt, maintains high hopes for his team this year. “I’m looking forward to a winning season, hoping to make the all-star team, and am hoping to achieve playoffs this year. That would be awesome,” he said.
Joining Bernhardt are senior captains Matt Smollen, Sam Eilenfeld, and Dominick Strassell.
Bernhardt mentioned, “We look at ourselves, the team, as a family. We’re a band of brothers.”
Last year Bernhardt earned NCC honorable mention with his position as safety and made 35 tackles. This year, he will fulfill a variety of roles: outside linebacker, kick returner, punt returner, and running back.
Right tackle and nose guard Dalton Dennison, a junior, also has big aspirations for the team. Dennison has been playing football since fifth grade. Reflecting on his experience, he said, “My most memorable moment was as a freshman when I got to sub in for the left tackle at the varsity level and from then on I played varsity in the games.”
The team consists of 32 total athletes, 13 of which are returning lettermen.
“We returned an experienced offensive line, an experienced full back on offense, and defensively, we returned 8 of 11 players, so we have a lot of experience coming back on defense. Where they were young last year and kind of took it under fire, so to speak, now they’ve got a year under their belts, and are more experienced, so the experience on both sides of the ball will help us,” said Spitler.
He commended the players for their work ethic and said, “We’ve got some blue collar mentality with our kids and that starts with our community. We’ve got a hardworking community, which feeds into the kids that we have in our football program. And they come to work, ready to get it done every day, along with great attitudes and a lot of enthusiasm.”
Lucas schools is part of a different conference this year, the Mid-Buckeye Conference, as opposed to the previous season when they were part of the North Central Conference.
“It’s going to be a new adventure and a new experience for our kids, but I think it’s going to be a good one. I think we’re going into a league where we’re very comparable in size to the other schools. Versus in the past being in the NCC, we were playing up a lot of weeks as far as playing the bigger schools. I think [being in the Mid-Buckeye Conference] is a new advantage for us, but it’s still not going to be easy because there are good football teams like Loudonville, Danville, East Knox in the league,” said Spitler.
In addition to facing challenges with the conference switch, Spitler noted, “I think defensively we’ve got to get off the field on third down and not give up the big play and let teams off the hook and then offensively, we’ve got to make sure to sustain drive and finish drives once we get in the red zone.”
To help overcome those challenges, the coaching staff implemented extensive off-season weight training and conditioning programs. “We have a boot-camp-style training that we do in June with very intense conditioning and weight training,” Spitler said, “It’s very similar to what the military does, and then in July we have our camp days, 10 of them, that state allows. We go to Ohio Northern University for three of them to come together as a team.”
The Lucas Cubs will travel to Plymouth on August 30 in their first game of the season.
