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Lions short on hogs, hungry for pigskin
Lions short on hogs, hungry for pigskin
By TONY LANGE
While the Orange football program doesn't appear to have bred many hogs in the off-season, the Lions are set on speed and seniors.
Returning from back-to-back 4-6 seasons, Orange is hungry for a winning season, said Adam Bechlem, who is 11-19 in three seasons as head coach.
Orange has won no more than five games and no less than three games during every season since 2004.
The main challenge the Lions will have to conquer is a lack of depth on the lines, Bechlem said.
"It's the same thing as last year. It's we're not very big on our lines, and we're not very deep on our lines," he said. "I don't know if you can ever adapt to being outsized on the lines. You just have to play hard and try to carry out your techniques the best you can, and that's all you can do sometimes against some of these bigger schools in our conference."
On the offensive front, seniors Daniel Shneyder and Kurren Bafna, as well as juniors Kenny Golovan and Emory Butcheck, will lead the shoving matches for the Lions, Bechlem said.
On the three-man defensive front, seniors Tashawn Chavis and Andrew Bray will throw their weight around.
Those six guys average no more than 200 pounds.
Elsewhere on the field, the Lions have speed, quickness and skill, Bechlem said.
Orange graduated 18 players but returns 18 seniors, 12 juniors, eight sophomores and two freshmen on its varsity roster.
A plus for the Lions is that they have a quarterback in every grade, Bechlem said, but the negative is that their experienced senior, Dominic Vitali, has been ill and not present at August practices.
The starter for week one against Bay on Aug. 24 is dependent upon Vitali's return, but sophomore quarterback Stephen Borgman has a lot of promise, Bechlem said.
If Borgman starts, the transition could be rough without an experienced running back, such as three-year starter Marcus Henderson, who graduated in June.
Top candidates to carry the ball this season are senior Chris Wilson and junior Dae'Shawn Henderson, Marcus' young brother. "Those two guys will be our work horses in the backfield," Bechlem said.
Wide receiving is one of the more comfortable positions for the Lions in terms of depth and experience, he said.
Seniors Chad Sonkin and Will Carter will be two key players running routes, Bechlem said. Junior RaShaan Arnold also returns with reception experience.
Senior Alex Immel, who mostly played in the defensive secondary last season, and then junior Rhonald Houston and sophomore Chris Von Hendrix also will get the go-ahead.
Those six guys will rotate in at defensive backs too, Bechlem said.
Sonkin and Immel will start at safety.
Arnold will start at corner. The other corner starting role could be filled by either Christian Macklin or T.J. Redus, both seniors, among other players.
"All those receivers and defensive secondary candidates, they're all going to play when we ask them to play," Bechlem said. "If a guy starts the game on defense and has a long series on defense, I'm probably going to put in fresh guys on offense and vice versa. They'll be interchangeable parts."
In 2011, the Lions had eight seniors who played linebacker and in turn converted to a 3-4-4 defensive lineup to play to that strength.
The 2012 Lions will still play with four linebackers, which better suits a speedy, undersized team, Bechlem said.
Wilson and Von Hendrix will lead the tackling effort and will be accompanied by a crew of other guys rotating in, Bechlem said.
In a push to finish above .500, three games lingering in memory from last season are Orange's losses to Kirtland, West Geauga and Wickliffe, he said.
"Those are three games last year that we could have had, but I don't know if I would call them revenge games," Bechlem said. "Every year is a new year, but we want to go out and win as many as we can and play as well as we can every Friday."
First things first, and Orange has Bay coming to town at 7 p.m. Aug. 24.
The Lions beat the Rockets in Bay Village, 14-10, last year, but the score didn't indicate the way the game went, Bechlem said.
"I thought we had the superior team last year, but the game score definitely didn't say that," he said. "But that's the mark of a good team and good competition. I'm expecting them to be a great competition for us this year, and that's how we're preparing for it. Sure, we've beat them two years in a row, but you never want to think it's easy, because three years ago they beat us, so the first game is always an interesting one."
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