By Gary Housteau

sports@vindy.com

LIBERTY

A 1991 graduate of Liberty and a one-time ball boy for the Leopards, Chet Allen, in his second year as the head man, really has a vested interest in this program.

“I’ve been around and I’m somewhat of nomad, but it’s good to be able to come home and put my roots down,” Allen said. “It’s home here, I know where everything’s at, things haven’t changed. They’ve had winning traditions before I took over and now we get to start our own. We had a bump in the road last year at 3-7, but hopefully with a great off-season we’re going to turn that corner and make our own tradition. We’re just trying to make Liberty proud again.”

Offense

“What I’m liking right now offensively is our speed and how we’ve torn down the playbook so we can utilize that,” Allen said. “We don’t want these guys to have to think, we just want these guys to run fast, score touchdowns and not get tackled.”

It all starts with junior Dra Rushton as the trigger puller at quarterback and junior Chris Edmonds as the H-back. Running back is going to be by committee between sophomores Jalen McKinney and Justin Cizmar. The wideout positions are going to be manned by seniors Andree Bowers, Tyler Cargill and David Hunt as well as junior Capone Haywood.

“One thing I don’t like is our lack of lineman,” Allen said. “I wish we had a couple more of them.”

The Leopards will count on junior Derek Gilcher and senior John Spivey up front along with junior Mohannad Yusuf, senior Alec Coman and freshman Simi Moananu to fill key spots.

“Overall I’m liking where we’re at offensively right now, I’d like to add a little bit to it but I’m happy where we’re at,” Allen said. “We have a lot of good pieces and parts on offense, it’s just focusing on the execution and getting it done.”

Defense

“We’ve put a lot more in defensively than we had to offensively because we put in a whole new package,” Allen said. “So the kids are learning as we’re going, we’re taking it a lot slower, making sure we’re knowing where we’re at.”

Edmonds is going to be the anchor on defense at middle linebacker. Rushton is going to be in the secondary along with Haywood. Spivey is going to be a defensive end. Coman is a linebacker. Junior Brent Demattia is the signal caller on defense at an outside linebacker position.

“Again speed is big factor on defense,” Allen said. “We’re going to be coming out of any where and every where and hopefully we disguise it well enough so people don’t see it.”

Special Teams

“In the kicking game we’re all wide open,” Allen said. “We’re looking to find a new kicker. We might be going for two a lot. If you’re 50 percent on two-pointers, you’re 100 percent on one. So we might have a lot of two-point plays.”

Hunt will likely do the punting once again for Liberty.

Outlook

Liberty played Ursuline at Mollenkopf in the playoffs in 2014 and Allen wants to get the program back there.

“I come in and I feel like I let down the whole community down going 3-7,” said Allen who has just five seniors to lead the way. “But I got people around me saying ‘no you did a lot with what you had and let’s move forward.’ So that’s what we’re doing. We’re not living in the past, we can’t go backwards, we’re moving forward and we’re going to get done what we can get done.”

So his game plan going forward is simple.

“The only thing I ask of them is effort and execution. That’s it,” Allen said. “There’s two words we live by here, ‘listen and do.’ You listen to what your coach tells you to do and then you go and do it.”