Thursday, September 19, 2024
PESHTIGO – Following a 2023 campaign that saw the Peshtigo High football team finish 0-9 and score less than 40 points all season, the Bulldogs, under first-year head coach Michael Berth, are looking to claim the narrative of a team on the upswing this season.
“They weren’t very successful on the field last season but I think they were a much better team than that record shows,” said Coach Berth, who has nine years of previous coaching experience in Peshtigo’s 7th and 8th grade program. “I know it’s very cliche but I think we’re going to surprise a lot of people this year.
The all-new Bulldogs
When asked if a Berth-led Bulldogs squad will be mechanically different from in years past, the new head coach took the opportunity to declare that this year’s team will in fact be a break from what fans might be used to seeing on Friday nights in Peshtigo.
“Night and day,” said Coach Berth with a smile on his face when asked how this season’s team will differentiate itself from years past. “On offense, they used to run the single wing. The single wing is from the 1920s and I think that’s when football first started. We’re trying to run more of a spread-style offense. We’re going to spread people out a bit more, get our speedy guys out into space and try to make some plays. Not that we won’t run the ball also but yeah, you’re going to see a big difference the first game.”
Be aggressive
Coach Berth, acknowledging he’s coming into this season as a new head coach with the overall expectation being to get the team turned around after finishing winless a year ago, said he will be relying on his coaching staff, including long-time Peshtigo coach Pat Robbins, as well as Coach Berth’s father, John, to develop a new defensive identity for the team.
“(Robbins) was my coach, he was my dad’s coach,” Berth said. “He’s going to run our defense. We’re going to run a 5-3 or a 3-5. We’ve got three down lineman and two outside linebackers so we’re going to try to get our athletic guys out in space, flying around the ball and trying to light some people up.”
Berth added that he’s been meticulously going over footage of potent college defenses and that he and his staff have been stressing to their players the importance of clean tackling and also to always be punching at the ball, looking to create turnovers.
“I’m not a big analytics guy but I saw that if you can cause two turnovers, you’ve got a 98% chance of winning the game,” said Coach Berth. “So we’re emphasizing that, if we’ve got the ball, they can’t score.”
Clean slate
As far as who will be starting for the team and what position they will play, it was all up in the air 10 days or so leading up to the season opener at home against Coleman on Thursday, Aug. 22.
“We don’t want to just hand anything to anybody,” said Coach Berth. “We’re a whole new team with a whole new coaching staff. If you want to be a quarterback, even if you’ve never played quarterback before, if you’re the best one, you’re going to be the man. Let’s just say we’ve got a couple of guys penciled in. Nobody’s penned in and we definitely don’t have anybody chiseled in stone yet.”
