Triton Trojans Entering New Era
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Anthony [email protected]
“The way I approach it is different than a lot of guys,” Johns said when asked about his go-to guy on the team. “I look at the team as a unit. It’s one of those things where if you lose a finger off your hand, it doesn’t operate as well as if it had been there. To me, none of them are any more important than the others. If someone had to ask you to cut a finger off, which one do you chose? That’s kind of how I look at it. I don’t want to lose any of these guys. For someone to ask which one is our standout or our star, I just say the team.”
And it wasn’t just standouts he was keeping quiet about, even his starting quarterback is to be determined.
“We haven’t made a decision on it yet,” Johns said. “It’s one of those things, where day-to-day, we evaluate what’s going on. We look at who’s doing what. We’ve got a lot of reps and I think you have to get two or three guys prepared.”
A 1989 graduate of Turkey Run High School, Johns went on to play football at Ball State University before beginning his coaching career at Tri-County in 1998.
He left Tri-County following the 2006 season, moving on to North Vermillion, where he became the head coach in 2007, compiling a 6-15 record before moving on to Evansville Harrison in 2009, where he was the defensive coordinator until moving to Bourbon, replacing Rodney Younis.
During his 12 years as the head coach at Triton, Younis went 42-90 with two sectional titles before stepping down.
Despite travelling nearly 300 miles, Johns is feeling right at home on the football field.
“Football is football no matter where you go,” he said. “What we saw down in Evansville is pretty much what you see throughout the state. People run what they can. Players kind of dictate what offense you’re going to run. The biggest transition was the team getting used to my style and how I coach. It’s always different when you have a change like that.”
No matter where he was in the state, he knew the name Jimtown, the team he must now compete against in the Northern State Conference, along with the likes of Bremen, John Glenn and New Prairie.
“I enjoy playing teams like that, because they’re always well-coached and they play good football,” he said. “It kind of makes you better when you play teams like that. We want to play teams like that and prove we can play.”
Of the eight teams in the NSC, only Culver has a smaller enrollment than Triton, and the 29 players on hand for the Trojans’ team photo means they may struggle against the bigger schools. Despite that, Johns is optimistic.
“When you have a small team, you have guys playing both sides (of the ball),” he said. “We try to get them in shape. We’ve been running them a lot. Usually, when teams are small, they play the old ironman style of football, when you had eight or nine guys going both ways. We’ll have quite a few of ours going both ways. It’s just about getting them subbed out to get them a breather when we can – trying to keep our best 11 on the field for the most part. That’s all you can ask for.
“We had about 38 guys out for our call-out meeting, but for whatever reason, some of them though it wasn’t worth their time,” he added. “One of the best coaches I ever coached under said, ‘You can’t worry about the things you can’t change.’ I can’t change the fact that our numbers are low, so there’s no sense in worrying about it. We’ll coach the ones we have.”
Players Triton will be without are last year’s starting quarterback Bryson Mosier, who graduated, as well as senior Cody Shively, who transferred to Mishawaka High School in the spring.
As a junior Shively, rushed for 510 yards, but the biggest loss will be his presence at linebacker, where he posted 138 tackles, 103 more than the second-leading tackler, the graduated Drew Fleagle.
What Triton does have is senior Cole Creighbaum, who played some quarterback last year, completing 6 of 14 pass attempts for 92 yards, one score and two interceptions.
As a running back, his 103 yards was third on the team, behind Shively’s 510 and Mosier’s 471.
At receiver, junior Grant Stichter is the top returnee, coming off a season in which he hauled in 17 passes for 182 yards and a team-high five scores.
“We have a lot of speed,” Johns said. “Usually when you have guys that can move, you like to spread the ball out a little. I won’t call ourselves a spread-style offense, but we use a lot of multiple fronts, a lot of different formations – offensively and defensively. They ran the spread a little bit last year, so some of the stuff these guys are doing is similar to the things they were doing before. We just kind of brought a different philosophy and viewpoints from what they were doing before.”
And that philosophy?
“We want to get out and try to attack people,” he said. “We’re not going to try to look for the long-ball every play. I guess you could say we’re a ball-control style offense. We like to march the ball and keep it going that way. Most football coaches are that way. They want to take time off the clock when they're on offense.”
On defense, he wants to be flexible.
“We’re a multiple front (defense),” he said. “Our scheme, the package I run, is dictated by the offense we’re facing. If you were to see us come out on the field, we’d probably be in a 40 front, but it’s kind of a defense that can adjust on the fly – so we could move into a five-man look pretty fast or a 4-3 Cover 2 real fast. From week to week, it’s going to change.”
Against the teams he’ll be coming up against in the NSC, beginning with a Sept. 6 contest at Culver, his guys won’t only need to be flexible, but well-conditioned too.
“It doesn’t matter if they have 100 on their team or 20, you can only put 11 on the field at a time,” Johns said. “We’re going to put our best 11 against their best 11. They may be able to sub out a lot better than we can, but I don’t think our approach will be any different.
“We need to have faith in what we can do and just go do it,” he added. “We’re not going to worry as much about what other people want to do to us. It’s more of what we do.”
Before conference play begins, Johns will open his Triton coaching career with two home games, beginning with Caston Friday and Northfield on Aug. 30.
“It’s going to be nice playing at home,” he said. “The kids always like playing at home. I don’t know what the crowd following has been like here in the past, but no matter what your history is, you always have a faithful following that shows up. The kids like seeing that. It’s part of the joy of Friday Night Lights. It will help to open here instead of someplace else.”[[In-content Ad]]
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“The way I approach it is different than a lot of guys,” Johns said when asked about his go-to guy on the team. “I look at the team as a unit. It’s one of those things where if you lose a finger off your hand, it doesn’t operate as well as if it had been there. To me, none of them are any more important than the others. If someone had to ask you to cut a finger off, which one do you chose? That’s kind of how I look at it. I don’t want to lose any of these guys. For someone to ask which one is our standout or our star, I just say the team.”
And it wasn’t just standouts he was keeping quiet about, even his starting quarterback is to be determined.
“We haven’t made a decision on it yet,” Johns said. “It’s one of those things, where day-to-day, we evaluate what’s going on. We look at who’s doing what. We’ve got a lot of reps and I think you have to get two or three guys prepared.”
A 1989 graduate of Turkey Run High School, Johns went on to play football at Ball State University before beginning his coaching career at Tri-County in 1998.
He left Tri-County following the 2006 season, moving on to North Vermillion, where he became the head coach in 2007, compiling a 6-15 record before moving on to Evansville Harrison in 2009, where he was the defensive coordinator until moving to Bourbon, replacing Rodney Younis.
During his 12 years as the head coach at Triton, Younis went 42-90 with two sectional titles before stepping down.
Despite travelling nearly 300 miles, Johns is feeling right at home on the football field.
“Football is football no matter where you go,” he said. “What we saw down in Evansville is pretty much what you see throughout the state. People run what they can. Players kind of dictate what offense you’re going to run. The biggest transition was the team getting used to my style and how I coach. It’s always different when you have a change like that.”
No matter where he was in the state, he knew the name Jimtown, the team he must now compete against in the Northern State Conference, along with the likes of Bremen, John Glenn and New Prairie.
“I enjoy playing teams like that, because they’re always well-coached and they play good football,” he said. “It kind of makes you better when you play teams like that. We want to play teams like that and prove we can play.”
Of the eight teams in the NSC, only Culver has a smaller enrollment than Triton, and the 29 players on hand for the Trojans’ team photo means they may struggle against the bigger schools. Despite that, Johns is optimistic.
“When you have a small team, you have guys playing both sides (of the ball),” he said. “We try to get them in shape. We’ve been running them a lot. Usually, when teams are small, they play the old ironman style of football, when you had eight or nine guys going both ways. We’ll have quite a few of ours going both ways. It’s just about getting them subbed out to get them a breather when we can – trying to keep our best 11 on the field for the most part. That’s all you can ask for.
“We had about 38 guys out for our call-out meeting, but for whatever reason, some of them though it wasn’t worth their time,” he added. “One of the best coaches I ever coached under said, ‘You can’t worry about the things you can’t change.’ I can’t change the fact that our numbers are low, so there’s no sense in worrying about it. We’ll coach the ones we have.”
Players Triton will be without are last year’s starting quarterback Bryson Mosier, who graduated, as well as senior Cody Shively, who transferred to Mishawaka High School in the spring.
As a junior Shively, rushed for 510 yards, but the biggest loss will be his presence at linebacker, where he posted 138 tackles, 103 more than the second-leading tackler, the graduated Drew Fleagle.
What Triton does have is senior Cole Creighbaum, who played some quarterback last year, completing 6 of 14 pass attempts for 92 yards, one score and two interceptions.
As a running back, his 103 yards was third on the team, behind Shively’s 510 and Mosier’s 471.
At receiver, junior Grant Stichter is the top returnee, coming off a season in which he hauled in 17 passes for 182 yards and a team-high five scores.
“We have a lot of speed,” Johns said. “Usually when you have guys that can move, you like to spread the ball out a little. I won’t call ourselves a spread-style offense, but we use a lot of multiple fronts, a lot of different formations – offensively and defensively. They ran the spread a little bit last year, so some of the stuff these guys are doing is similar to the things they were doing before. We just kind of brought a different philosophy and viewpoints from what they were doing before.”
And that philosophy?
“We want to get out and try to attack people,” he said. “We’re not going to try to look for the long-ball every play. I guess you could say we’re a ball-control style offense. We like to march the ball and keep it going that way. Most football coaches are that way. They want to take time off the clock when they're on offense.”
On defense, he wants to be flexible.
“We’re a multiple front (defense),” he said. “Our scheme, the package I run, is dictated by the offense we’re facing. If you were to see us come out on the field, we’d probably be in a 40 front, but it’s kind of a defense that can adjust on the fly – so we could move into a five-man look pretty fast or a 4-3 Cover 2 real fast. From week to week, it’s going to change.”
Against the teams he’ll be coming up against in the NSC, beginning with a Sept. 6 contest at Culver, his guys won’t only need to be flexible, but well-conditioned too.
“It doesn’t matter if they have 100 on their team or 20, you can only put 11 on the field at a time,” Johns said. “We’re going to put our best 11 against their best 11. They may be able to sub out a lot better than we can, but I don’t think our approach will be any different.
“We need to have faith in what we can do and just go do it,” he added. “We’re not going to worry as much about what other people want to do to us. It’s more of what we do.”
Before conference play begins, Johns will open his Triton coaching career with two home games, beginning with Caston Friday and Northfield on Aug. 30.
“It’s going to be nice playing at home,” he said. “The kids always like playing at home. I don’t know what the crowd following has been like here in the past, but no matter what your history is, you always have a faithful following that shows up. The kids like seeing that. It’s part of the joy of Friday Night Lights. It will help to open here instead of someplace else.”[[In-content Ad]]
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