Football Preview: Kamara, Bulovas set for an Interboro revival

GLENOLDEN >> The question about the starting running back behind him brings a fairly simple answer from Interboro quarterback Julian Bulovas.

“He’s amazing. Look at him,” Bulovas said at practice last week, gesturing toward Abu Kamara. “He’s a hell of a player.”

One glance at Kamara makes clear that he looks the part of a feature back. From the 6-1, 200-pound frame to the intensity that shines through practice — when asked how often he fails to win post-practice sprints, a smiling Kamara offers “no, never” — Kamara is ready to shoulder the responsibility of the Bucs’ offense in 2022.

He does so with a sense of momentum that emerged late last season even as the Bucs compiled a 3-9 record. That mark deserves context: The 2021 season was the second under coach Dennis Lux, replacing Pennsylvania coaching legend Steve Lennox. Given that the fall 2020 campaign was moved to the spring of 2021 by the COVID-19 pandemic, it was in many respects the first real season he had in leading Interboro.

In retrospect, though, the normalcy that has returned this year makes both of Lux’s first two seasons appear as the scheduling aberrations they were. He described this summer’s preseason as “refreshing” for the return to normal rhythm, with a full offseason of weight-room activities and an extended buildup into the fall.

Combined with a roster of seniors that have been in the lineup since their truncated spring sophomore seasons, the starting point for this fall is far advanced from last year.

“We’ve been going at it since January — we’ve been lifting, running, conditioning, all of that,” Kamara said. “When we come into camp, it’s like, alright, now we can advance a little bit. Last year, it was just June, July then camp. We had to tone it down last year as opposed to this year where we can turn it up a lot more.”

“Last year, we started off with our base plays for the first two weeks, and the coaches stepped in a lot telling us what to do,” Bulovas said. “This year, we picked it all up and we’re getting more complex with our playbook.”

Those nuances inform the journey Interboro has taken under Lux. The Bucs started 2021 with just one win in eight games, but they found something late. Interboro routed Penn Wood and Avon Grove to slip into the District 1 Class 5A playoffs with the 16th and final seed, then gave top-ranked West Chester Rustin all it could handle in what was a one-score game after three quarters. Four weeks earlier, Rustin had bludgeoned them in a nonleague affair, leading by five touchdowns at half.

The playoff cameo provided valuable experience for underclassmen to bring into 2022. But the bitter taste left by what the Bucs consider a game they let slip away also has served to drive them through the offseason.

“We could’ve beat them,” Kamara said. “When we went back and watched film, it was different techniques, different schemes and stuff like that, that we could’ve used to beat them, and we just didn’t take advantage of that.”

The battle against Rustin and a two-score loss on Thanksgiving to District 1 Class 6A semifinalist Ridley were moral victories for a young squad that knew it’d have one more year together.

Kamara is the obvious headliner, having finished sixth in Delco last year with 1,342 rushing yards and 16 touchdowns. He and Bulovas, a 6-2 senior quarterback, have had two years to work together.

Lux has worked hard on getting bigger bodies into the program. The interior of the line — center Matt Galanaugh, guards Rocco Barone and Logan Roberts — are back, though both tackles have been replaced. Tolu Awoyemi, Theo Demopoulos and Alfred Thomas are options in the running game to augment the workhorse Kamara, while Dom Gunter and Eben Affainie will look to replace the deep threat at receiver posed by the graduated Zakee Brooks. Gunter, Kamara and Affainie have experience together in forming the core of a much-improved Interboro basketball team last winter.

Galanaugh will be a primary defensive playmaker, on a side of the ball where the Bucs must compensate for the losses of ball-hawking linebackers Brady Hummel and Robert Forbes. Kamara will helm the defense at strong safety.

Tying it all together, Lux said, is significant buy-in from the seniors, trusting in a staff primarily comprised of alumni. That’s vital at a place like Interboro, where numbers are somewhat limited. But faith in each other and in Lux’s building project was evident down the stretch last year. And Kamara sees it in the intensity being brought to workouts this summer.

“I felt like toward the end of the year, we started to jell more,” Kamara said. “We understood the concepts, the schemes, the defense, the offense, special teams. We just jelled together as one. From those four games last year, we carried that momentum over from last year and that fire.”