2023 Prep Football Preview - Mary M. Knight

Owls have numbers, optimism

Matt Baide | Aug 31, 20230

Matt Baide/SMCJ count

Mary M. Knight started the first day of practice with double the numbers of players from last year and twice the amount of optimism heading into the 2023 football season.

Head coach Tom Kerr said he likes the number of players who turned out this year in comparison to the past two years with seven and nine players.

"We're also going to have our middle school flag program that we're starting out here that starts on Sept. 5 so we'll even have those bodies that we can use from as well," Kerr told the Journal. "We're pretty excited to get this thing back to where I had it pre-COVID where we're going to have those numbers and continue to have those numbers to sustain the program."

Logan Walters and Robbie Strain are the senior leaders on a team that didn't lose any players from last season's team. Strain will be the primary running back and Walters will be the focal point on the offensive and defensive lines. Strain is the only player with three years' experience, while Walters has played two years of football.

"(I'm) very excited to be bettering myself from last year," Strain said. "I think it's much better for the team and bonding, chemistry."

Strain said he is grateful for being a leader and he plans to "show out" at running back this season.

"I'm grateful for it. We already know each other since the school is so small, so we already know much about each other," Strain said. "I think the football team is going to be pretty fun since we already know everything about each other."

Strain said the team's goal is to be near the top of the standings by the end of the season.

With the rest of the team, Kerr said he has an idea of where every player will fit, but he's still working on figuring it out.

"I know them all and I was their P.E. teacher for a long time and know some of their skill set and I have an idea but it's not set in stone yet," Kerr said.

With the added depth, Kerr said it will be nice to be able to give players a break when they need to come off the field. It will also expand the playbook and allow the Owls to try some new things on offense and defense.

"The thing I'm excited for is during practice, we can actually do a scrimmage," Kerr said. "We can actually line up against each other and not just against air the whole time and try to be creative where we have coaches out there being bodies in places. We haven't been able to do that since pre-COVID, since that fall of 2019 was the last time we had sustained numbers like this for my first three years."

Micah Palmer, an eighth-grader last year, started at quarterback and Kerr said he will be playing quarterback to start the season. There is another player who has a chance to get some snaps at quarterback but the job is Palmer's to begin the season.

Some players to keep an eye on this season, according to Kerr, are freshman Gabe Walters, sophomore Jordan Wood and junior Ben Camacho.

Last season, MMK was winless and scored 61 points in five games and forfeited three games.

Kerr said he doesn't think the league will be dominated as much by one team. Lake Quinault lost some seniors but has some experience coming back. Northwest Christian is also expected to be a quality team, but Kerr doesn't know what to expect from the Crusaders.

With most of the boys in the high school turning out to play football this year, Kerr is excited about where the program is at.

"It tells me that we're getting the guys out here who need and want to be out here. We're doing things the right way in all of our athletic programs to get the most out of our student body," Kerr, who is also MMK's athletic director, said. "As limited and small as we are, if you go in the volleyball gym right now, they have just as many bodies as we do out here so it's going to be good to see for the future, especially two seniors, one junior, a lot of where it's coming from is our underclassmen. It's good, where we're at, I like where we're at. I'm excited for the opportunities but we do have a lot of work to do to build off what we did last year."

The expectations for Kerr this season are "we're in the fight more."

"We're in games in the second half and be in contention on the scoreboard and with each other," Kerr said. "That's the biggest thing is the expectation. Not saying that we're going to win every game but to be in more games. That's progression that we want to see is not just getting out there and getting the running clock but to complete games so that's more of the expectations."