(Malvern) — The East Mills football team has plenty of replacing to do heading into the 2023 season.
Head coach Kevin Schafer says losing six starters on offense and six starters on defense is tough enough. However, they will also have to replace former co-head coach and defensive coordinator Claude Lang.
“We’d been co-coaching the last five or six years, and that’s a big loss,” Coach Schafer told KMA Sports. “He did an excellent job and was getting better and better every year. I told him at the end of the year last year he was the best coach on our staff, and that’s going to be a big loss.”
Assistant Nick Greiner will step into the defensive coordinator role for the Wolverines, which will likely rely on their depth of speed and athleticism.
“We’ve got a lot of skill position players,” Coach Schafer said. “A lot of receivers, and Zach Thornburg is definitely a better quarterback than he was a year ago. But the concern we have is on the line. We graduated all three of our offensive linemen, and we only have two kids on our roster over 180 pounds with one of those two a freshman.”
Coach Schafer and staff are getting creative in trying to protect Thornburg, who threw for 1,170 yards and rushed for another 371 in 2022.
“Layne Mastin used to be a tight end and has been moved to the line,” Schafer said. “Our other guard might be a former running back. We’re trying to decide to go with kids that have played line at JV or go with a quicker, more athletic line because we have so many of them. We still haven’t nailed anything down, and we might learn a lot (this Friday).”
This Friday’s opener marks a trip to West Harrison, where the Hawkeyes are also dealing with a slew of graduation from last year’s team, which won a district title, made the playoffs and won a postseason game for the first time in school history.
“Nolan Birdsall sticks out,” Schafer said. “He’s 6-foot-3, 200 pounds and is going to have the ball in his hands a lot. Their quarterback (Mason McIntosh) is 6-foot-2, 190 pounds. Those two guys are bigger than the guys we’ll have starting on our defense. They did graduate a bunch of kids, but they have a lot of kids over 200 pounds. I’m assuming we’re going to see a heavy dose of Birdsall behind those big linemen and then play action off of that.”
Coach Schafer readily admits what you see in Week 1 will likely not be what you see for the entire season. In fact, it might not even be what you see after halftime of their game with the Hawkeyes.
“We’re going to do some things differently based on what we’ve lost,” Schafer said. “We are going to see some changes from them, too, based on graduation, and we’ll have to adjust on the fly during the game. I just hope our offensive line makes a big jump in this next week, and we improve in our next four practices to give Zach some time to hit our receivers.”
KMA Sports is looking for an East Mills/West Harrison reporter for Friday night during the Red Oak Chrysler Football Connection Show. Please email dmartin@kmamail.com if you have interest. Check out the full interview with Coach Schafer in the audio file below.
