 Hello everybody and welcome to this year's High School Football Preview Show. My name is Mike Martin, joining me as the coach, Chris Wright. Chris, why don't you tell our viewers which schools we're going to be covering and their coaches? Well, we'll have Chris Hine from Sheboygan South, Steve Brickson from Sheboygan North, and Matt Savada from, actually it's Kohler, Lutheran, and even Sheboygan Christian kids that are playing there. Are they the Crusaders, the Blue Bombers, or the Eagles? Yeah, we're not so sure about that, but they're trying to get that program started and Coach Savada's got a lot of good ideas. Yeah, coach is in his second year. During the breaks, we're going to have the schedules for Lutheran North and South, and at the end, we'll have our football schedule, so you can look for that. When we come back, Chris will have Steve Brickson on the set and be talking North football, so stay tuned. All wear masks, but masking dental flaws can put your dental health at risk. Orthodontists improve smiles by fixing the problem. Visit an orthodontist to unmask a healthy smile. We're back with Coach Brickson from Sheboygan North. Well, another season you're off and running. Yeah, another season. You know, I know we haven't done as well as we wanted to, not just the last few years, but basically since I came in, we made the playoffs in 2006. You know, that's the kind of program we want here. You know, not really sure what's going to happen this year, but we sure are excited to get started again. Well, the season kicked off on a real positive note. You know, nice little fundraiser, a golf outing. Over 100 people attended, almost 120 people attended. Yeah, it was, I think we had probably 40 more people than last year, 40 or 50 more people, so it was a very, very big success for us. We had Will Blackman from the Packers come in and give a little speech, so he signed some balls and gave some away as well, so it was really, really successful. We have a lot of our kids work that as well, and they have a lot of fun doing that, but very, very big success, and it's going to be a great help to the program. And fundraising is part of it. It sure is. And golf outing is kind of a nice thing to get, you know, I thought it was nice to do it, you know, in August and kick off the season. Yeah, it's always nice when we get there right at the end. It's sort of something we look forward to after our contact days. We do that at the end of July. Those went real well this year, and then that Friday we ended up going ahead with golf outing. So a good way to end the week. Another great positive note. Wonderful numbers again, up and down your levels. We have really good numbers this year. We've got 50 on the varsity team. We've got our freshman team close to 50. We've got 47, and then we're a little down in JB. We have about 25 there, but overall, you know, close to 125 kids in the program, and that's pretty outstanding. We're happy with that. Now, great numbers doesn't always turn out into victories, but I mean, obviously you guys should be doing something to get kids interested in playing and enjoy playing football at North. We always want to do what we can to try to make it fun. That was sort of been our staple of the organization here since I got here. You know, if we can't have fun, then why are we going to be here? But obviously it's about time we start winning some football games. That's our number one goal this year. We're going to go out and have fun every day, but we're really working to win and change this thing around and turn it around. It's about time. This is my fifth year here, and I pretty much gave myself about five years, and this has got to be our year. With the football team, I think one of the strengths of your football team is I think you got a lot of skilled players on both sides of the football. Each year we have good skill players, and we usually have a really good backfield. We have that again this year. Brennan Gundram, Micah, Fries, Kevan Rivera, Josh Brugink, and Reed Keen, outstanding players, and Reed's a sophomore this year, so he's going to be starting in the backfield. We have a really good skill set there, also on our skill positions on the defensive side of the ball. We actually have a little size on the line this year with Chris Cologne and Tim Boss and Fletcher Bayern, so we've got some bulk there which we haven't had before, so we're going to utilize that. You've got quarterbacks on both sides of the field, too, with returning quarterback and DVC, and you've got Tanner on the other side. You've got two, like I said, quarterbacks on both ends of the field on both sides, so that should help, too. Yeah, good quarterbacks both, also just great leaders. Tanner's an outstanding leader on the defense. Derrick's an outstanding leader on the offensive side of the ball. Tanner's been getting a lot of reps at quarterback as well, and so if anything ever happened, I'd never forbid Derrick that Tanner can come in and do a great job as well. There's a little change for you. You tweaked the offense a little bit. Finally, yeah. We were pretty strict with our offense, and I'm a big believer in the run game and I'm a big believer in the wing tee, so we didn't really lose that concept of this. We were keeping the wing tee backfield, but we're running out of multiple formations now, and it really looks like it's a different offense, although it's very similar to what we ran the past four years, but we are going to go with one tight end set and one tight end set. A couple of reasons we changed that. One is we think that in order to compete now in division one, we think we have to get spread out a little bit more, and second of all, we're really playing to our personnel. We've got incredible, like you said, good skill players. You know, we're getting Derrick. We want to do the option more. We want to get him running out a little bit more as well, utilize his athleticism, so we're taking that route and we're going to see what happens, but it sure has been fun to run. Kids have picked up on it pretty well this year. I think the conference is just loaded. There's things I have about the conference, but one thing it is, it seems very talented, but it looks like the bottom teams and the top teams might be a little closer together this year. Well, you know, some of the teams that were really the stronger teams in the conference are, you know, I'm sure they're still going to be strong teams, but I know a lot of kids that were really talented seniors graduated from several teams last year, not to say that they're that much weaker. Those Bay Ports and into Peers and Green Bay teams, they're going to come through, they're going to be strong teams again, but, you know, we feel that it is, there's a little more parity than there was in the past and we feel we're going to be a little better this year. So, you know, goal is always the playoffs and, you know, we're just going to wait and see what happens. Another change this season is they finally put Sheboygan South on the schedule as a conference game and you're going to play them at the end of the year and say at the beginning of the year. Right, the last game of the year would be that Thursday, the four level one playoffs, the following Tuesday and we're excited, number one, to have South on the schedule being a regular conference game. That's fun for North and South and the city in general. That's what we need here. And the nice thing is that it's at the end of the year and that's what happened, it hadn't happened since 2006 where, you know, we had that really exciting game, North and South both. So, we want to have that again and, you know, I hope North and South both make it to the playoffs but it would sort of be needed if it got down to that last week again and, you know, had that kind of competition at the end of the year between North and South. Well, I know Coach Heinrich will always make comments too and you did too is, well, I don't think we're at our best right now. It would be nice to see these guys at the end where we both are, you know, kind of peeking at the end of the year. Yeah, well, you know, Chris and I know each other real well and I talked with him about this and the funny thing is that we're going to have so much tape on each other that it's probably going to be hours of watching video but we're going to have a lot of stuff to look at from them. They're going to see everything that we're doing so nothing's going to be new to them even though we're implementing new things this year because, you know, they're going to have eight games on us already. Yeah, that's looking forward to that as well. One final thing for those that may or may not know WIA is considering some readjustments, perhaps taking conference play out of the scheme and doing district things. Any thoughts of maybe you're changing over to doing something to that in the future? Well, I like the way that the league is set up right now. I do like they proposed different teams that we would be playing and then it goes back, I believe, to the old Fox Valley where you have the Oshkosh teams and Fond du Lac and Manitouak still and, you know, that's interesting. I think it would be neat to play some of those teams but this is a good conference. This has got some strong teams. If we want to be the best, we've got to beat the best and we have a lot of really good strong teams in here but I'm not really a big fan of the proposal. In all honesty, I like the way things are now. I'm a true believer that, you know, in real life, you know, people win, people lose and you've got to earn your way to the playoffs. Yeah, I'm kind of traditional too. It's nice to play south and, you know, prebble and Manitouak and things like that. Sometimes with this schedule, it seems like you hopefully will never miss those schools and those are always nice teams to play. Yeah, and we missed, you know, Manitouak the last two years and that's a team that's right up the road. So we've got to play those guys. We've got them on the schedule again this year. We've got self on the schedule. So we are off to a pretty good start so far. We've had a few bumpy practices the last couple of days but that's bound to happen. Overall, I think we've done a lot better than we thought we would. So we're pretty excited to get the season started. Well, thanks so much for coming in and good luck in your scrimmage this week and first week and we'll see you in two weeks. When we return, Mike Martin will be with Coach Savada from Cheboygan Lutheran Coler Christian. For 37 million Americans, this is life living below the poverty line. Find out what you can do. Please, don't let one more fall. Go to povertyusa.org and get involved. Joining me is Matt Savada from Cheboygan Lutheran Coler and Christian this year. Yes, yes, that's it. What happened there? Christian approached us and they wanted to try football out so we thought that where our program is now that it wouldn't hurt to maybe add a few more players in and so we got a co-op going with them now, I guess a try-up and we got a couple players and hopefully they can make an impact with our program. Literally a couple, right? Two, yeah, I got two but a couple of quality kids that we like. I was going to say it's got to be a real battle because they're pretty strong in soccer and that's a fall sport so you lose some kids from there. Yeah, there could be a couple kids that we could get but I think that I'm not going to worry about the kids that we don't have and the ones that we have, that's who we're going to coach and try to get. Usually what happens when they co-op a team and they take the population of all those schools and add it up and then they plug into whichever division you think that bumped you up a division or were you able to stay down? I think it might move us up. I'd have to look at our enrollments but I think we'll be at, we're between five and four but right now we're not really concerned about that because we want to start competing in our conference. I guess if it gets to the point where we need to worry about our division then I think we're in a pretty good spot at that point. Now you're entering your second year as the head coach. First of all, how did the first year go for you? You know, it kind of went as expected. We got one win, a whole new system. We came in with Flexbone Offense and it takes a while for the kids to learn that. New defense, new terminology and we had a young team. So this year we got a lot of returning players and we're further along than we were last year at this time. Second part of the question is what changes have you made or do you think you need to make? Defensively we have some new fronts. We're still staying with our base 4-4 but some different looks to give teams as far as alignments. Offensively we have some new plays that we adjusted. Our base offense is the same. Some minor adjustments with motions and small things I think will give us a little better chance. One of the things we talked about when I initially contacted you, you had mentioned that your numbers were down and I know there's a number of freshmen included in that core group. How does that bode for your squad this year? Numbers are hurting us right now and the number one thing I worry about is injuries and so we're really trying to go through practice now staying injury free so that we can get to the competition and really we have. We don't have any injuries that are affecting us and really practice, that dictates how our practice is but we're getting along and the kids that I have are quality kids. One of the things it seems that high school football has moved into like a college type of thing where they platoon kids. You have your defensive players and your offensive players and obviously with numbers low it kind of forces your hand. How does that play into the defensive side of the ball because I thought defensively that hurt you last year. You were able to score but you weren't able to stop people. Yeah, you know a couple of quarters we're pretty tired but talking to other coaches in our conference this season already their numbers are down everywhere and there's not a team in our conference that's going to be able to platoon. So they may have more subs but It's a level play field. It's more level than what people would think. Now offensively you mentioned that you'd made a big shift last year and one of the things whenever you change an offense you got to have a quarterback that's on ball and I know you have a good one that you're planting in at quarterback this year but you did lose the guy from last year and there's a certain learning curve for the new guy even though he's a good athlete. Yeah, that was tough losing Kurt. He was leading Russia in our conference as far as quarterbacks go but the kid I have there, Jake Kans he was in all conference wide receiver last year for us and athletic kid and he's smart and in our offense where we run option it's not necessarily how much speed you have there athletic ability that's nice but if they can make a read and he's well off in doing that. Cedar Grove Belgium really had an outstanding season last year they lost in the final game of the playoffs they looked to be down a little bit at least from last year because they did lose some really great athletes. Who do you see in the conference as challenging for that top spot and where does Luther and Christian Coler fit in? Right, obviously Cedar Grove is on everybody's list right now as being the top team being state runner up. They return I know a lot of their front line maybe for all of them but I think Howard's Grove and they're always in the mix, Random Lake, Woosburg, they're always in the top. Right now we're fighting for that middle spot and I think that some of the teams in our conference we are going to be able to compete with and hopefully beat. One of the things you had mentioned you know we talked about the idea that the numbers were down and you had mentioned the numbers were down throughout the conference why is that you know what can a coach do to enhance the numbers of kids participating? You know one thing that again I look at what our program is doing we are one of the goals that I had is to start a youth program we're in our first year this season with a youth program and I've got 65 kids signed up for that that's something that our program hasn't had in the past and in a few years I'm hoping that we'll have 65 in our program and that's all we can do is get them at the young age and try to keep them there and so if they're having fun and if we see success at the older levels and they see success then it just builds on each other and that's our goal. If we have some people that are watching and they want to get their child involved in this what would they do to... Well I contact myself Doug Bocchini he's heading our youth program he's well known in Kohler and it's a co-op between the Kohler and the Lutheran grade schools and the Christian grade schools right now so the information is at their schools if they need to get a hold of somebody. Alright great, thanks for coming in and best of luck during the season we look forward to coming out and seeing you play again. Alright thank you. We're going to step out and we come back I'll have Chris Hine from South High School. Well, Feds right? Can I find a slightly used hatchback at one of those government options? Something roomy but practical. Chris thanks a lot for coming in I really appreciate it I know it's a busy time of the year for you we're taping this show on a Thursday tomorrow or Friday you guys have your scrimmage who are the teams you're going to participate in that scrimmage against and what are you looking for when you have these kinds of scrimmages? I think we have one of the best scrimmages in the state as far as competition Homestead who's been in the state finals the last three years will be at our scrimmage they've won two of the last three years the state title. Yeah, but what happened the one year when they lost? Yeah, they lost our win arrow head it's been those two schools in the state for finals the last three years then Kettle Moraine will be in who's from a very strong conference a very strong football program and Jane Soll Parker who's one of the top teams in their conference so I mean it's always a great indication for our kids it's a chance to measure up again some of the best teams in the state representing some of the best conferences in the state. As your team plays what are you looking to? Well, I mean for us the biggest thing is you always are replacing starters and we're looking at those new kids that we're asking to step up and now be a starter this year and seeing how they compete we have a depth chart obviously but tomorrow we'll really find out who's ready to play against Bayport next week Friday. Now, we had Steve Brickson on earlier and he said his numbers were up considerably he was very happy in that respect Matt Zavada who just stepped off said his numbers were way down and even added a school to their conglomerate and you said your numbers are down itself. Yeah, they are. I think that's great that Steve's been able to get his numbers up at North but the trend that I've known us talking to coaches from the EWC from the area, from the CLC it seems like the vast majority of the schools in the area's numbers are dropping and it's too bad so I think football has a lot to offer and it just seems like maybe kids are for whatever reason are turned off from the sport hopefully it's just a trend that's going to go away and move back in the other direction here pretty quick. Well, as we've done these shows over the years one of the things that I've noticed is that it does fluctuate. You have your good years in terms of numbers and things like that and for whatever reason there's a downturn and I know I think it was before you even got to South High they canceled a freshman schedule. Well, it was actually 2003 the year that we made our first playoff appearance our varsity was six and three but we did not have a JV team that year so it was about six years ago and then we were able to build the numbers back up and had them growing and growing and last year had our largest numbers and then just fell off this year. Last year you guys were three and six overall two and six in the conference what do you need to do to move up the ladder standing wise? The big thing for us this year especially with our lack our depth isn't as good as it's been in the past is we have to stay healthy that's really what hurt us last year we started 25 different kids on defense last year due to injury not because kids weren't getting the job done and we had to replace them and 17 different kids on offense so I think that may be some kind of record we need to stay healthy it's really critical especially this year we'll be carrying around 40 kids on our varsity with some sophomores suiting up it's just critical yeah exactly now one of the things that you did lose that was essential last year was your quarterback Jake Gristow he was a good one what do you do to replace? it's going to be hard to replace Jake people that came to our games last year solid he had a great year thought he had some good wide receivers but that kind of hurt you too when you got a couple injuries Renzelman got hurt a couple games last year for us our tight end for four games last year but looking forward to this year we have two quarterbacks that we feel extremely confident in going into the season we're going to play them both Jake Rissey is one of them and Ethan Berlin Jake Rissey is a senior throws a ball extremely well Ethan Berlin is a junior just a great athlete runs a ball a little bit better they're both very heady kids both leaders we're going to find room for them both on the field this year and I have every confidence that the quarterback position is going to be a strength again for us this year last year you brought a kid up maybe about four or five games in a freshman I believe took an opening kickoff and ran it all the way back is that the young man out for football Brandon Capitillo yeah absolutely we moved him up the third game of the season against Southwest and he played predominantly special teams he actually led the conference and kick returns last year we moved him up because our varsity kickoff team couldn't tackle him in practice we said we got to get this guy in the field his first game he returned to kickoff for a touchdown against Southwest and we only had ten guys on the field so he's pretty dangerous kid and he's fun to watch I think you're a little bit like the University of Wisconsin in that when you look back at South High in the past at least you've always seemed to have a strong offensive line how does it look this year I love our offensive line our depth is a little bit shaky right now hopefully the second team kids will develop but when we talked about losing numbers it seems like a lot of the kids we lost were the bigger kids and so our line is a little bit smaller this year than it's been in the past but we have I think our athleticism is a little bit better so far the kids their work ethic has been unbelievable in practice you know I just love coaching those kids and I don't care how big or small they are you know I'll go to bat with those kids any day I mentioned before we went on I said I pulled this question off the last years and I said I had to do a defense because that is your first love and you surprised me with your answer are you still going to call the defense no actually I'm not and I know people probably think I've lost my mind but Coach Edis is actually going to call the defense this year I'm going to call the offense it just came down to you know we're fortunate enough to have him again this year helping us and I had to give him more responsibility he's a hallfame coach he's obviously proving he knows what he's doing last year just coached quarterbacks for us and I want to give him a coordinator's position and him and I share a lot of the same philosophy as defense I think and so that seemed like the better fit would be to have him call the defense and me to move over to the offense finally you're going to play north conference game it's going to count and you're playing them at the end of the season how do you look at that I mean I think it's great for the fans I think for the students you know for our kids and the players they don't care if it's week one or week five or week seven or week nine they're going to get up for the north and they probably don't matter it doesn't matter then if it's conference or not either yeah right exactly but I think it's great that it's the last game of the season I think that's probably the expectation for the fans and the students we can build some excitement in both schools leading up to the game and hopefully have a great crowd you know hopefully the game means something for both teams we're running out of time but I do have one more question for you and that has to do with the conference how do you see that shaking out where do you see yourself fitting in we have you know we have such an outstanding conference right now you know not knowing everybody's depth chart or I've been looked over everybody's roster coming into the season you know those upper echelon teams those teams over the last two years have proven that they're going to be consistently towards the top Bayport who we open the season with is always going to be a strong team Green Bay Notre Dame is a great tradition and will be a strong team I think really Manitowoc is a team that the last couple of years has been four and five five and four that I think is going to be kind of a dark horse in the conference as far as ourselves if we stay healthy you know we hope to be to get in that upper echelon you know to to get in the top five teams in the conference and our goal is to make the playoffs and we got to get to five and four well good luck with that coach and again thanks for stopping in and when we come back Chris and I will wrap up the program Don't miss the next in a series of monthly programs about the Morgan City Government with City Desk with Mayor Bob Ryan on WSES this Monday at 9 p.m. Welcome back everybody first of all we want to thank the coaches for coming in and for giving their time and we really appreciate that yes it is always nice to them to take their time they do have practice second week of practice and they're coming in I know Coach Brickson comes in right after practice to do his interview now we need to go over these predictions because they're a little bit interesting and I think I gave you the results the other day and I won not so good this year for me let's talk a little bit about the CLC first of all getting my sheet out we can talk about that last year was Cedar Grove that won the conference and they were very very good they lost a lot this year our predictions were you picked Random Lake I picked Howard's Grove obviously neither one of us got that right but who do you see this year well Cedar Grove last year not a great season an unbelievable season on the way to the state finals 13-1 by the way championship so congratulations to them but I'm going to take your group this year I'm going to try that Howard's Grove team you took my pick I'm going to go with Howard's Grove too they always seem to have good speed and it's a good football school let's talk a little bit about the Eastern Wisconsin you picked Plymouth last year which is a popular pick and I took Key Wascom who had won the year before and that was kind of a chancey pick I thought because it's hard to repeat but they did they won conference in 12-1 overall so I won that one how do you see the EWC turning out this year it's totally different now years ago as falls in Plymouth but it seems like Kawascom seems to be the popular pick so I'm going to take Kawascom they do have a great track program and you know like Howard's Grove a speed thing that seems to be working for them right now so I'm going to go with that popular pick of the Kawascom Indians and I'm going to take your pick from last year I'm going to go with Plymouth hopefully they can pick it up and keep that championship or bring it back rather into Sheboygan County and now we move on to the Fox River Classic Conference and last year you picked Bayport an excellent pick I picked Ash Wabanan and total upset Notre Dame finishing 8-1 the conference 10-1 overall it surprised both of us yeah I think again a lot of graduation for some of the schools you know with athletes and things I think top to bottom it might be a little closer this year but I kind of like I'm going to go with Notre Dame this year but watch out for Ash Wabanan and Green Bay Southwest Oh really? I'm going to go with Bayport your pick from last year before we move on let's talk a little bit about Lakeland College because right now the schedule has them for three games I don't know if we'll cover all three and they look to be kind of interesting this year yeah they're always picked towards the top and you know looking at our schedule the last game of the season we have them against Aurora and Aurora has been kind of the team that's been pretty successful in that conference so hopefully coming to Lakeland on November 11 that final day there maybe just maybe they'll have a chance to make a bid for an NCAA pick they have a couple of players that were recognized in the pre-season Keith Woodson and Aaron Kramer the cornerback and Kramer alignment so they've got some good players on the team and that's nice to see out to Lakeland and we always enjoy going out there and it's nice that we have three on the schedule last year we had a little weather problem that's not a little problem but hopefully we can get out there and we always like going out to see the muskies Chris thanks a lot for joining us on the program again and look forward to working with you during the football season again thanks to all the coaches thanks to all of you for watching and I'll see you on the road