Carey looks to retool, not rebuild

CAREY – Carey is looking to clinch its fourth consecutive outright Northern-10 championship. It will need some of its younger players to step up in order for that to happen.Carey graduated a majority of its big-time players from a season ago. Among those include all-N10 first-team selections Matt Allomong and Jonah Peters (OL), Alex Putnam (DL), Conner Norden (LB), Austin Niederkohr and Carter Smiley (DB) and defensive lineman and defensive player of the year Butch Brodman. "I do recognize that people believe we graduated a lot and might take a step back," Blue Devils coach Jonathon Mershman said. "They said the same thing after '21, then they said the same thing after '22, and then they said the same thing after '23. We graduated a lot, but it's our job as coaches to get the new group ready and see what we can do."Smiley also was named to the all-N10 second team as the Blue Devils' starting quarterback. Norden and Niederkohr were top targets on offense as well, Norden in the backfield and Niederkohr as a wideout. Putnam and Brodman also were prominent figures on offense and defense a season ago. All-N10 second-team defensive lineman Duane Gibson, along with all-N10 honorable mentions Dom Yeater (TE) and Landen Mitchem (OL) graduated as well. Carey's senior class was the core of its team last season, and leaves a gaping hole on both sides of the ball. Just two All-N10 players remain on the Blue Devils. First-team running back junior Eli Steen, who ran for 1,200 yards with 15 touchdowns as a sophomore last season, and junior Dash Puckett, who registered 102 tackles as a second-team linebacker. Steen will be expected to play an even bigger role as the most experienced member of the Blue Devils in 2024. "He's been around the block a few times," Mershman said. "With that said, also comes expectations and a little bit of leaning on him. He's got the most experience on the team playing varsity football. There's some expectations to go along with that. It's up to him to rise to those challenges and help this team out.""We had 17 seniors leave last year, who were all contributors to the team," Mershman said. "We pretty much have started this year with a clean slate of leaders. It was at a point where we were wondering who was gonna step up to be the leaders of this team. A couple of them, they recognized from the off-season workouts, guys that were leading us through that. As camp went on and guys started stepping up, it just became apparent who our leaders are. I think the team as a whole has done a really nice job of picking and establishing our leaders."Mershman has been impressed by his group so far, particularly with their effort and energy. With such a young group, that effort will be crucial if Carey wants to keep its place atop the N10. "I've seen a group of young guys who are really willing to put in the effort to get better every single day," Mershman said. "We're really starting to galvanize as a team. I'm super excited about the way we are putting our effort in.""There's gonna be some growing pains," Mershman continued. "We've got a lot of youth and inexperience out there. There are gonna be times where we aren't gonna do things exactly right. Hopefully, they're not giant mistakes. I've seen us grow tremendously, week after week so far. I'm extremely excited, if we can keep on this path of growth, then come week one we'll be ready to go."Despite the drastic personnel changes for the Blue Devils, Mershman is keeping the basics of his game plan the same on both sides of the ball. With any team, there will be changes here and there, but it's clear that the brand of football Carey plays leads to winning, so their philosophies will be relatively the same this season. "We always look a little bit different, depending on what our skillset is," Mershman said. "Depending on who our quarterback is and who our running backs and receivers are. The core is still gonna be there, there's always gonna be a little bit of a flavor difference. The ingredients might just be different."Along with relying on Steen, Carey will look to some of its other experienced players to improve and help shoulder some of the newfound responsibility. "We're looking for Tripp (Phoenix) to make a big jump this year, (he) played corner for us all year last year and got some wide receiver time," Mershman said. "Kyler Boes played linebacker for us pretty much the entire year, and we're hoping he makes a big jump as well. He knows the varsity speed. Dash Puckett is another guy that has experience at linebacker that will help us with knowing that game speed. We've got some younger guys that have gotten some experience, and we're gonna need to lean on them to help those inexperienced guys get to that level.""We lost so many guys on all three levels," Mershman added. "That's tough, because there isn't a level that we can just lean on like 'yeah, we've got a bunch of guys back at this level, let's lean on that.' We lost a bunch of guys on all three. Therefore again, those guys with experience are gonna have to be the ones that we lean on and they're gonna have to bring everybody together and make everybody understand you've gotta do your job for others to succeed."Several other players have caught Mershman's eye during camp, and are expected to be impactful players this year."I think Gavin Snyder has done a really nice job, he moved offensive positions," Mershman said. "With that position move, I think he really helped the team out extremely. I think he's coming along really, really well. Garrett Boes, who played some guard for us last year, moved to center. I think he's done a very fine job with that move as well. We just had some pieces that moved around a little bit, so more guys could excel in the positions that we need them to." After three straight N10 title seasons that saw the Blue Devils go 21-0 in league games and win a state championship in 2021, the development of Carey's more inexperienced players will be huge in keeping its momentum going. "I think they've bought in," Mershman said. "I really thought during our scrimmage that we've had so far and during these two weeks that they've really bought in. I think we're trying to put ourselves right back where we were. Our goal isn't to be our best in Week 1 and be settled with that. We need to keep moving forward and keep climbing the hill for the season. I'm a firm believer that we'll probably be playing our best ball around week eight, week nine. It doesn't matter what team we have, we're going to be getting better every week."