Thursday, September 19, 2024
MENOMINEE - The Maroons are getting back to form for the 2024 football season and have put in a week of practices in Menominee.
Last season the Maroons established a name for themselves amongst the West Pac Copper conference before driving their way through the post season with dominant performances, eventually finding themselves in the MSHAA Div. 7 state tournament where they faced Jackson Lumen Christi. Unfortunately the close battle ended with Menominee falling short by one score 34-30.
After the loss the Maroons will be looking to take the challenges of a new season day by day and will be aiming for another successful season.
Behind head coach Chad Brandt, who enters his 3rd season as helmsman for the Maroon machine, Menominee will seek to get things off on the right track. Joining Brandt will be assistant coaches Dave Mathieu, Mason Kewley, Lucas Choinard, Dave Clarke and Keefer Conery.
“We’ve had a lot of energy out here,” said Brandt about the effort he has seen so far from his players. “We’re very happy with that. From freshman to senior we practice together. We all push each other to get better. And I think we have been building a great family atmosphere here. Every player supports each other here and builds each other up. And coach each other up. As coaches we may not see every rep and we expect the older guys to coach the younger guys.”
After a season wraps up the game doesn’t just stop. There is always more work to be done and another season is always just around the corner. According to Brandt the guys have never stopped looking forward to the upcoming season and have been consistently putting the hours in needed to maintain the Maroon Machines perfect working order.
“Off season is always critical and there has been a lot of support by the guys getting after each other,” said Brandt. “Last season was a very long season, went all the way to Thanksgiving. So we gave the kids off till the middle of January. If they weren’t in a winter sport they were in the weight room and during the summer everyone was on each other to push further and many have been taking part in football camps”
Last years State Tournament run was fueled by senior leadership from a core of eight seniors, but this season there will be over a dozen players with state championship experience taking to the field. Along with the seniors the Maroons employ a solid number of juniors with 15 total. This core brings back some serious experience on the offensive line which will hope to establish their domineering presence in the trenches.
“I don’t know that there is any pressure to meet last year’s level, We rode the energy all the way and we took that ride. It was very memorable,” said Brandt. “We know in camp that we are not going to get to state in August. We have a lot of work to get done. But what we can do is we can set the table to give ourselves a serious chance in November to do some good things. We have some great ability here and some big building blocks along with a little bit of a chip on the shoulder, to get back and stay hungry.”
Brandt expressed his excitement about his current team and what he sees as some of the strengths of his current squad saying, “We have a lot of bigs coming back. We have six kids back that we had brought up two years ago as sophomores. So that’s a big core. Guys like Lucas Thoune, Cam Gauthier, Wyatt Cronell, Kaiden Bell, Hunter Westby and Isaiah Odom. They have played a lot of varsity football games. We should be good in the trenches this year, This is the physically biggest team I have had in my three years.”
It won’t be an easy road for the Maroons though and they are well aware of the stiff competition they will be facing in their conference games this season. With Gladstone, Negaunee and Kingsford all in their sights in a series of three weeks that will prove to be critical for the teams late season push.
“We get to start this season with the M&M game which we always look forward too,” said Brandt. “A lot of tradition there, We got that at home. From week two through eight we are in conference play. Some of the teams I kind of expect to be up in the rankings are Gladstone, Negaunee and Kingsford. We hit them all in a row last year and it’s the same this year with weeks six, seven and eight. I expect it to be similar this year. All the teams in our conference are good tough teams.”
