Football Preview: After one-game season, Cardinal O’Hara ready for restart
MARPLE >> Danny McManus had a huge smile on his face as he went through a conditioning session on a recent steamy morning.
Neither the heat nor blistering sun bothered the senior offensive tackle from Cardinal O’Hara. He was just glad to be back on the field working out with his friends and teammates.
“This is what I missed, the summer workouts,” McManus said. “It gives you something to do in the summer because a lot of times you’re just sitting around. You get to hang out with your buddies. It’s team bonding.”
Fellow senior Dan McPhillips felt the same way.
“I missed coming in day-in and day-out, working with my brothers,” McPhillips said. “The whole family aspect of football was one of the things I missed most. I’ve known some of these kids my whole life and that three, four-month period that I didn’t see them without any football activity was tough, but we were able to keep going, do our own stuff, which is going to pay off this year and paid off in our one game last year.”
The Lions were hit hard during the coronavirus pandemic last season. Not only did it rob O’Hara of its traditional summer workouts but also limited the Lions to just one game, a 35-6 win over Archbishop Ryan.
O’Hara had four other games canceled for a variety of reasons due to the pandemic.
“We showed up for one game and were about to take the field for warmups and that game got called,” O’Hara coach B.J. Hogan said. “We tried to play Springfield at the end of the year but then the Archdiocese shut down all sports. It was just a bunch of different emotional experiences for the kids and the staff last year.”
The Lions are prepared to make up for lost time. Just how good O’Hara will be, though, is anyone’s guess. Hogan said the Lions “looked good” in that one game, and have a number of starters returning, including McManus and McPhillips, a running back. Of course, it’s difficult to tell what effect that lost year will have.
“This COVID year, you don’t know what anybody has,” Hogan said. “Before we all got shut down by COVID you’re saying, ‘This school has this many All-Catholics coming back.’ Now it’s a year-and-a-half later, so you really don’t know who has what. I think there’s going to be a lot of surprises in the league.”
A couple of things seem certain: Hogan will have nice size on the Lions’ offensive line, and a veteran in the backfield in McPhillips.
McManus is 6-foot-3, 240 pounds. Junior Xavier Lozowicki is 6-5, 280 and Brian Stratton is 6-0, 225. That’s a good place to start.
As for McPhillips, who also plays outside linebacker, he ran for 102 yards and one touchdown on 19 carries in the win over Ryan.
Junior linebacker John Shelton and sophomore defensive back Michael Kutufaris are two players to watch on the defensive side of the ball. Shelton also could be the starting quarterback. He and senior Jake Carbin will fight it out for the starting job.
“We have a lot of experience. We have a lot of guys who have been playing since we were sophomores,” McManus said. “A lot of the juniors played as freshmen. A few years back we had a really young team but now we have a lot of experience. Playing together as a team will be key because we don’t have a lot of superstars. If we can play together as a team we can be pretty good.”
