SYRACUSE - With a new head coach, a new offensive scheme and the loss of an all-everything player, the Wawasee Warriors will have a different look this season.
Following an 8-3 season in 2006, coach Joe Rietveld decided to hang up his whistle, allowing Tom Wogoman to move from an assistant coach at East Noble to the new Warriors' play-caller."It's been a learning curve right now," Wogoman said. "Other than being a first-year head coach, we've been able to start a freshman team after a two-year hiatus and we have at least five different assistant coaches. There's a just a lot of learning going on."
The majority of the learning at early Warrior practices has been on the offensive line, where prospective linemen Mike Atchison, Connor Beer, Gene Dush, Brady McKibben, Braxton Riley and Jacob Sexton will look to create holes for running backs Eric Brown and Tom Schwartz.
"We have a brand new offensive line and a brand new system," Wogoman said. "We're going to be running a two-back set. In the past, Wawasee's gone shotgun a lot, but we want to get under center this year. The (shotgun) offense has been explosive, but we're going to want to control the ball a little more this year."
The reason for the Warriors' explosive output can easily be tracked to the graduated Joe Leach. In 2006, the senior quarterback racked up 4,700 total yards - 2,090 passing and 1,610 rushing. Along with yardage, Leach was also 17th in the state in points per game, scoring 12 per contest.
Now, with Leach gone, Wawasee will be looking for a new quarterback and leader.
"It's a two-man race right now, and will soon be a three-man race," Wogoman said, referring to Ryan McDonald, Jake Sommers and Dylan Ringler. "They're all real athletic kids. When we get to the days entering the season, we're going to have to make some choices."
Wawasee returns only three offensive starters this season (Tanner Benzinger, Dush and Schwartz), but on the defensive side, Benzinger, Brown, Tyson Kasse, Shelby Kelly, Riley, Evan Melching and Schwartz return.
"A lot of what we do on offense is contigent on our defense," Wogoman said. "We're gonna have to hang our hat on our defense."
Wogoman is hopeful his 4-3 defense can hold the opposition in check enough to allow his inexperienced offense to win some games. But that defense will have to limit Northern Lakes Conference teams, a proposition that can be tough.
"It's an outstanding conference," Wogoman said of the NLC. "As an assistant at East Noble, we played Northridge and Concord in Sectional 10, which has a lot of NLC teams. I played at Goshen, and as a Goshen graduate, I know what the NLC is like. It's a neat thing to come to Wawasee and be in one of the top conferences in the state. Top to bottom, it's solid all the way through."
So with a lot of new things at Wawasee, coupled with a staunch schedule, Wogoman is taking things one step at a time.
"Wawasee football has been pretty successful in past years," he said. "The goal now is to get better with each practice. I know that's a coaching cliché, but that's where we're at. With me being new, and the kids learning a new system, it's been a learning curve."
