[tps_title]Jenkintown Drakes [/tps_title]
Gene Walsh Digital First Media
Jenkintown players at practice August 9, 2017.
Numbers game has Drakes in rebuild mode
The numbers game is always Jenkintown’s toughest opponent in football season.
One of the smallest schools in all of District 1, the Drakes annually lose a high number of starting players on both sides of the ball. If they happen to have a small turnout in a class in a given year, eventually it catches up to them.
This fall, the Drakes are hoping to have around 28 players. But with just five seniors, there will likely be some growing pains in Jenkintown.
“We need to step up and take control of our team,” senior Pat Morrin said. “We lost nine or 10 seniors from last year. I was a starter, a couple of my friends coming back were too and we need to be the ones to step up. We’re not going to set any huge goals for ourselves; our main goal right now is (first opponent) Nativity BVM.”
Jenkintown went 7-3 in 2016, winning the District 1 Class A championship, but lost a huge part of that team to graduation. Chief among them was running back/linebacker/kick returner Steven Charlemagne, now at DelVal, a guy who rarely came out of a game and played through numerous bumps and bruises.
Morrin, a tight end last year but the projected quarterback this fall, said Charlemagne is the kind of leader he wants to be, a guy who not only produces on the field but also has the ear and attention of his teammates.
Morrin was a breakout player on offense for Jenkintown last year but in changing to quarterback, he’s had to learn a brand-new position in just one offseason.
“I know these freshmen and sophomores, they haven’t played a down of varsity,” Morrin said. “I’m trying to be that guy they look up to. That’s what Jenkintown football represents to me.”
Coupled with the loss of players like Jake McGrath, Gavin Lafferty, John Contoudis and Jason Plange, Jenkintown is certainly looking at a different season in 2017.
Because Jenkintown is too small to field a JV team, the underclassmen who get on the field essentially learn on the job. For junior receiver/linebacker Riley Smith, it was something he had to go through.
“We’re going to have a lot of underclassmen play this year because of our lower numbers. Last year we had a dominating senior class but this year we don’t have that and we’re going to have to rely on younger players,” Smith said.
Morrin was a breakout player on offense for Jenkintown last year but in changing to quarterback, he’s had to learn a brand-new position in just one offseason.
Likewise, he’s had to figure out how he can be one of the leaders the Drakes will need him to be all fall. A three-sport athlete at Jenkintown, the 6-foot-3 senior paid plenty of attention to the way Charlemagne commanded the locker room and other seniors like McGrath and Contoudis led by example.
“I know these freshmen and sophomores, they haven’t played a down of varsity,” Morrin said. “I’m trying to be that guy they look up to. That’s what Jenkintown football represents to me.”
Owens knows it’s a tough transition but said Morrin has put in the work to fill in under center as best he can.
Smith and Christian Solis will likely be two of his go-to targets while 5-foot-3 sophomore Albert Koniers will be deployed in a number of roles. While small in stature, Koniers more than makes up for it with his toughness.
LAYING A FOUNDATION
Nobody at Jenkintown is looking much further than the first game of the season. With a lot of players out to play football for the first time, Owens said a lot of preseason practices were going to have to cover the basics and start from the ground up.
He is expecting roughly nine juniors and 11 sophomores this fall and hoped a fair number of freshmen decided to come out. Of that number, even the juniors, some are brand-new to the game.
“I’m hoping we’re able to get better as the year goes on,” Owens said. “We’re going to have some peaks and valleys. We’ll do the best we can this year but also have an eye on building and gaining experience for going forward.”
By Andrew Robinson; arobinson@21st-centurymedia.com
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