By charles grove

cgrove@vindy.com

GIRARD

The Girard High School football team may have sputtered to a 2-8 record in 2015, but head coach Pat Pearson believes the numbers didn’t tell the entire story.

“I think our record was a little misleading,” Pearson said. “We lost a few games by just a couple of points.”

The Indians did suffer a few very close defeats. A home loss in week four to Champion (9-7) and a road loss to Campbell (7-6) tell part of the story of a season that began 0-7.

Mixed in with those razor-thin loses included other losses by a few possessions like a 50-41 loss to Niles and a 23-9 loss to JFK.

Other games got away from the Indians. Hubbard spanked Girard 55-7 in Week Two and Jefferson and Brookfield won 40-19 and 49-14, respectively.

Still, the Indians finished the season on a positive note by winning two of their final three games against Newton Falls and Liberty. Pearson said he believes that type of play will carry over to 2016.

“Our seniors played well at the end and hopefully that runs off,” Pearson said. “We’ve got lots of sophomores that will do a really good job this year.”

offense

One of those sophomores will be quarterback Mark Waid. He passed for 1,152 yards last year and threw 10 touchdowns opposed to three interceptions.

The biggest loss will be All-County running back Jake Ryser who ran for 1,003 yards his senior season, averaged 5.45 yards per carry and found the end zone 10 times.

Senior Kenny Walters and sophomore Jamil Bannister will hope to pick up where Ryser left off. Junior Anthony Backus hopes to be an offensive threat as well.

Girard plans to continue running their spread offense and will try to tire out opposing defenses.

“We’ve got an established style with the spread offense here at Girard,” Pearson said. “We want a lot of tempo and we want to go up and down the field quickly.”

The offensive line will have the most experience. Seniors Matt Weiss and Trevor Gump will team up with juniors Marcus Caudill and Patrick Ledenko.

defense

The Indian defense has much more experience coming back. Gump is the lone lineman returning but Walters and junior Carlos Bach return at the linebacker position and Backus, senior Nick Hall and junior Michael Belcik will fill out the secondary.

“The defense, and especially the line, is going to have to grow up quickly,” Pearson said.

special teams

Bailey McDermott is listed as the kicker. The soccer specialist is just a sophomore, but has looked strong in practices, according to Pearson.

outlook

Girard’s schedule features three playoff teams from last year in Warren JFK, Brookfield and LaBrae. The schedule also includes two teams with winning records who missed out on week 11 in Hubbard and Jefferson. But despite the schedule and youth on offense, Pearson isn’t lowering expectations.

“We’ve established a tradition at Girard,” Pearson said. “We expect to play for a conference championship and playoffs. That’s the goal every year. It’s a young group we have but they’ll have to grow up. We’re not lowering expectations just because we’re young.”