Thursday, September 19, 2024
LENA – The Lena/STAA Titans are prepared for another season in the 8-man league of the WIAA. Last season they competed in the Peninsula conference but this season sees another reorganization into what is now know as the Across the Bay Conference.
Though they find themselves in a new conference the competition amongst that conference is nothing new with teams including Algoma, Gibraltar, Gillett, GB NEW Lutheran, Sevastopol and Suring.
Titans Football has been a CO-OP for the last 21 seasons and is in entering their 11th season as an 8-man team. The Titans have an experienced coaching staff that will lead the team into this season including Co-Head Coaches Dale Lange and Ed Huberty and Assistant coaches Craig Huberty and Ty Beland.
“We know we have a lot to do here,” said Co-Head Coach Dale Lange. “We have some pretty big targets on our backs after these last couple years of success. We are looking forward to continuing that success this year. But we have had some good intense practices so far. The guys are all concentrating on what they know we have to accomplish. We have some big shoes to fill from last year. We basically lost our whole front line, and those guys up front are key to success. We do have some running backs coming back and some quarterbacks, and some nice receivers. As long as we don’t have any injuries we should have a good crew this year.”
Last Year the Titans were a perfect 8-0 in the 8-man Peninsula Conference. Their only defeat was in the playoffs against a powerful Three Lakes Team.
“We have had just a great crew of guys coming up these past years,” said Lange. “You just start to build that tradition of winning. Winning becomes a habit, just like losing can, but we have been fortunate that we have overcome that losing and that’s due to our guys doing a lot of work to keep it up.”
With every season, teams are forced to recoup losses from graduation and this season is no different for the Titans. Last year’s seniors included some pretty big talent. Talent such as, State All-Star Linemen Anthony Seefeldt and Colton Skrobel, and All Regional Linebacker Logan Graef and another key all around utility player Dylan Dyer. These seniors were big anchors on both offense and defense. Filling some big shoes this year will be returning All Conference first team Defensive Lineman Colton Miller, second team Lineman Lucus Heimke and defensive back Ty Shallow, others include Linebacker Calvin Peters, Max Peterson, and Caleb Schlosser. On the Offensive side All Conference Honorable Mention Lineman Tug Paidl will be an anchor with strong support from Colton Miller at Tight End, along with Center Cooper Demmith.
Balancing out the line work will be Tim Benser and Blake Behnke. The back field will be filled with two All Conference Second team running backs Calvin Peters and Ty Shallow, with Lucus Heimke and Luke Koslowsky joining the action. Other players filling the building blocks for the Offense and Defense and will most likely see action on both sides of the ball are Mason Spice, Roger Cruz and Sam Peterson in the backfield.
“We don’t have as many big linemen like we had last year,” said Lange. “That’s not to say we don’t have a few big guys out there. We just need to see how they are going to handle the pressure. We have Tim Benser and Blake Behnke. Two big boys. We are hoping that they will hold up well. We had some guys in the past few years that were battle tested. But we still have some solid stuff with guys like Colt Miller and Tug Paidl, Calvin Peters as well as Cooper Demmith.”
Filling other positions will be Zander Thompson, Hunter Brief, Jake Farley, Dominic Pagels, and Eddy Kropp. Co-Head Coach Dale Lange made note of one of the keys to success this season saying, “To be successful we will need several of our younger players to step up and challenge each other for some starting positions. We are very balanced with good numbers at all grade levels and will have nice numbers at our JV Level as well. There are a lot of good and solid teams and everything is up for grabs. This will be the sixth season that there will be an 8-man State Playoff, with a 16 team field throughout the state. We are hoping to be one of them.”
