The Garden Plain High School football team kicked off their season close to a week ago when the Owl football team had their first practice of the summer. This season the Owls return six starters on offense and six starters on defense.
The Owls are looking to have another spectacular season and hopefully get deeper in the playoffs. Their first game will be at home against the Wichita Trinity Academy Knights on September 5. Due to the lack of referees the game will be held on a Thursday night.
The Garden Plain Owls finished 5th last season in the class 2A, according to MaxPreps. They are predicted to finish 4th in this season. This will be a very interesting game as both teams usually do not play on Thursday nights.
Garden Plain is led by six squad leaders, one of them being senior star quarterback Brady Brack. In an interview he said, ”Overall, we’re really focusing on staying low, coming off the ball hard. We want to be the most physical team day in, day and night out, just all the time.” He later said, ”We want to punch people in the mouth, make them get tired fourth quarter, and that’s where we get come in and win the game,”
Head coach Todd Rice believes his team has improvements to make. He said, “Just consistency. You know, we’re trying to get better at our details. And so if our guys are willing to play fundamental football and just be physical every snap of the game, good things are going to happen for us.” He added, “It’s nice having five guys back that are two-way starters, three for three years now. Having our starting quarterback back, having a couple of key linemen, our main running backs. Just kind of the confidence level, the continuity of our staff has pretty much been intact.”
The Owls will need to prepare their secondary for Trinity’s heavy pass offense. Last season Trinity had just over 2,200 passing yards, but will Trinity be able to stop Garden Plain’s heavy run offense which had nearly 3,000 rushing yards last season? Guess we’ll have to wait until September 5.
