LEIPSIC – It was repetitive but Leipsic football coach Joe Kirkendall didn’t mind saying the same words over and over.
Looking at a list of lettermen on the Vikings roster, he said, “He is,” every time he came to a returning starter.
He said it 15 times in all, covering 19 positions, before he stopped. All those returning starters are from a 7-4 playoff team a year ago.
So it is not difficult to see why many people around the Blanchard Valley Conference think the Vikings could be headed for a season as good or better than that one.
Offensively, Leipsic has two returning first-team All-BVC players in running back Gavin Lomeli (1,086 yards rushing) and wide receiver Cole Rieman (61 catches, 921 yards). Quarterback Dylan Schroeder threw for more than 2,000 yards and was honorable mention All-BVC and offensive lineman Corey Plassman was on the third team.
Defensively, linebackers Brayden Niese (second-team All-BVC) and Victor Sanchez (honorable mention All-BVC) are two of the top returning players.
Kirkendall says the coaching staff emphasized two areas in the offseason and preseason – finishing drives offensively and playing better defense.
“Offensively, we could move the ball from 20 to 20 with anybody. We needed to do a better job of finishing we when got inside the 25-yard line, whether it was protecting the football or converting on downs and finishing a drive,” he said.
“And we needed to be able to get our defense off the field. The teams that beat us, those were the kind of things that got us. We just weren’t good enough defensively.”
In Leipsic’s four losses last season, it allowed an average of 31.5 points a game.
Schroeder, a junior, is another in a series of multi-year starters at quarterback at Leipsic, following players like Liam Nadler and Zach Kuhlman.
Asked if he identified those quarterbacks early, Kirkendall said, “We try to.”
“When we took Liam Nadler and started him as a sophomore, we knew Zach Kuhlman would come in and play as a sophomore after him. The plan was that Ross Mangas was going to play as a junior but I left and wasn’t here for that. But we knew after that that Dylan Schroeder would be our quarterback as a sophomore,” he said.
Schroeder will be surrounded by a veteran offensive line and several threats in the backfield and at receiver.
Four of the five offensive line positions belong to returning starters – Clay Gerdeman, Abe Escamilla, Riley Spangler and Plassman.
In the offensive backfield, Brayden Niese, Vic Sanchez and Juan Pena could get carries along with Lomeli. “Our goal is to spread out the carries this year. We like our depth at running back,” Kirkendall said.
The emergence of Edgar Chamale and Tyler Hiegel at receiver this summer means the Vikings “are not a one-trick pony at receiver,” he said.
“We played a lot of young kids last year and have had another year in the weight room. You take those two factors and what we hope is we’re a little more aggressive, that we play with a little more confidence and that leads to us being more physical and more decisive and just playing the game faster. If you play the game faster, you have a lot more opportunity for success,” Kirkendall said.
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