Written by: Jalen Thompson – Entertainment editor & Peyton Miller – Staff writer
As the Dragons varsity football team kicks off their season, previous victories place heavy expectations upon them.
Last year, the Dragons faced many tough opponents, yet raged victorious as state champions. Head coach Kyle Ralph and varsity player junior Sam Hirschy hold high expectations for this season as well.
“That’s kind of the fun part about every year,” Ralph said, “they get to leave their own legacy. Obviously expectations here are always really high, but this is this year’s chance to try and figure out what their mark is going to be. Our schedule is really brutal. It is easily the hardest schedule that we’ve played since I’ve been here. They’ve got a massive task in front of them, but that’s the exciting part of every year. It’s a chance to see what their version of New Pal football can do.”
High expectations are expected from the head coach, but Hirschy also sets the bar just as high.
“You know we’re a young team, we just got to just go out there, play hard. We’re one of the hardest working teams I’ve ever played with,” Hirschy said.
In order to live up to those expectations, a lot of work goes into training and preparing during the offseason.
“I think the offseason is about what the kids make it,” Ralph said. “The difficulty really lies in how hard you choose to push yourself on an individual level and how hard you push your group. So the intensity is always going to be there as a general statement. But then you get out of it what you put in. I’m really happy with our guys this offseason. I think they are going to do a really good job. Our numbers are really good and our strength has improved tremendously so I would say while it’s always difficult in our program, I think these guys have really pushed themselves to a really high limit as far as what they want to personally get out of it from August to December, and I’m really happy with that.”
Ralph expects roadblocks for this team to get through and they will need to overcome their weaknesses to truly thrive this year.
“We have a lot of guys in new roles and a lot of guys stepping into bigger roles. Just the lack of reps and experience overall.”
Every season is a chance for the team to improve. This season, Hirschy has some things he believes the team needs to work on.
“I would say our conditioning, and we don’t have as much depth as the other teams and a lot of us have to play both ways,”Hirschy said.
