An offseason full of questions is finally over for the football team at McKinley High School, and they’re hoping to find some answers as their season opens Saturday night at Fawcett Stadium.
But despite an offseason that left McKinley—players, coaches and fans alike—wondering who would be coach and which players would be playing for the Bulldogs, expectations are high for this year’s team.
A poll on popular high school sports forum, yappi.com, shows that many think the Bulldogs will win the Federal League this season—only GlenOak received more votes in the poll.
While the poll was taken among fans, the Bulldogs are sure to be gunning for a Federal League title—and more. After a surprising defeat in the first round of last year’s playoffs, they’ve got something to prove.
McKinley players do drills at a preseason practice. Photo - Seth Thompson
The road to the playoffs, however, won’t be an easy one for McKinley this year. Five of their first six games of the season see them playing Cardinal Mooney, Huber Heights Wayne, Lake, Fitch and GlenOak—all teams who are expected to make postseason runs themselves. Only one team on McKinley’s schedule, Jackson, had a losing record last season.
So how will the Bulldogs win games? If their offseason scrimmages are any indication, it all comes down to line play for McKinley.
Their defensive line in particular has the ability to change games, led by senior Se’Von Pittman. In McKinley’s last scrimmage, against St. Ignatius, Pittman looked like he could do whatever he wanted against the opposing linemen, and several times rushed throws, swatted them back or sacked the quarterback.
And though it’s hard to miss Pittman—he’s easily one of the biggest players on the field and arguably the best for McKinley—the rest of the defensive line is nothing to scoff at. They’re big, and they’re tough, and they’re going to knock opposing teams around.
The biggest question mark for the Bulldogs, though, is their ability to score—and no matter how good a defense is, you can’t win unless you put points on the board. The Bulldogs struggled to score during their last scrimmage, though they appeared to be running just a handful of plays from the playbook.
The reason for the uncertainty is as much due to the offseason questions as anything else. Two players that were expected to be big producers for McKinley are not on the roster—Reid Worstell, who transferred to GlenOak where he will be the starting quarterback, and running back Elijah Beach.
The team’s first test of the season comes right away, in the form of Youngstown Cardinal Mooney. Mooney went 7-5 last season, losing to eventual Division III runner up Akron Buchtel in the Regional Finals.
In fact, most of Mooney’s losses last season were against top teams—one was to Division V state champion Ursaline, one was against Division I champs St. Edward and another was against Archbishop Moeller, who finished the season ranked 13th in the state according to maxpreps.com.
Coming into the season, maxpreps has Mooney ranked 10th in Division III.
In short, Saturday’s season opener will be the toughest McKinley has had in years—and hopefully, they walk out with more answers than questions.
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