The 2011 Brookings-Harbor fall sports schedule is set to kick off this Friday night as the Brookings-Harbor High School Bruins football team gets set to take on the Challengers of Cascade Christian High School out of Medford.

The football program is just one of five athletic teams – girls soccer, boys soccer, volleyball and cross country – that will be competing for bragging rights and a shot at Far West League and state titles in their respective sports.

Justin Schultz leaps for a pass during a recent practice session for the BHHS football team. The Pilot/Jef Hatch

Football

When the football team hits the field Friday night they’ll do so with a senior class that is seven strong and excited about their possibilities.

Will Du Four, Dylan Habiger, Alex Pate, Jacob McKinney, Tyler Lueckfeld, Tim Drafahl and Chandler Gotfried are looking forward to their upcoming season and the depth that more passing has added to the playbook since last year. 

“I think it will be a good change for Brookings-Harbor,” tight end Pate said. “For the last couple of years we’ve been known as a running team and it will definitely open up everything.”

Running back Lueckfeld agreed, “Passing will keep them on edge so the runs open up too.”

Habiger cited a new closeness between the team members for their anticipated success. 

“For all of us seniors, I feel like it is meshing,” he said. “Everything is meshing, we’re not learning anything new, we’re refreshing.”

Head Coach Joe Morin agrees that everything is meshing, including his coaching staff, which has returned from last season without any changes.

Dave Freeman, Chris Schofield, Eric Sullivan, Bruce Wales, Tom Cerna and Ted Burdett are all returning assistant coaches with various specialties and Morin said that they handle the program when he needs to be working on other things. 

“I trust them,” he said. “Freeman and I have three Far West League titles under our belts. We’ve won it every other year we coached together. They make it easy for me to get the other stuff done by taking care of their groups.”

Athletic Director Jon Young is excited by the direction he sees the football program taking.

“We’ve got our second year under Coach Morin,” he said. “One of the things I’m excited about by Morin is that he does a lot of hands on with technology, using it to draw up plays and schemes. They should be really competitive.”

According to the senior players, the team’s goal is to be the Far West League champs, and Morin agrees as long as the players can put in the effort.

“First thing we want to see is kids checking in and putting in a good day’s work,” he said. “It will pay off. We’re always looking at competing for a Far West League title; a state title.

Boys Soccer

Head Coach Pancho Garcia is returning for his third year, and is excited to make a run at a Far West League championship.

“We want to be champs and I think we have a good team and a pretty good chance,” he said. “We’ve got plenty of potential, the kids are just awesome.”

Garcia has seven seniors who have been playing with his coaching style for the three years he has coached, and they are ready to win a championship.

Thomas Spratt, a senior forward, is ready to go hard and give it his all.

“I’m excited,” he said. “We’re all pretty stoked, and want the games to start.”

The other seniors joining Spratt are Pete Peterson, Nick Corpening, Tyler Snow, Jacob Ferrer, Jose Hernandez and Chandler Gotfried.

The rosters for the BHHS boys soccer team hasn’t been finalized yet and Garcia is impressed with how hard individuals have been working to try and claim one of 18 roster spots for their own. 

“Everyone wants one of those spots,” he said. “They’re all fighting to have a spot on the varsity roster. We should have a great team.”

According to Young, the team has a lot of talent.

“I think that Thomas Spratt should be one of the best players in the league,” Young said. “Anytime you have one of the best players in the league, you try to find people to fill in the gaps, be roll players and facilitate. We have those pieces there.”

Garcia added two new pieces to his coaching staff this season with Jose Moises Anaya and Peter Spratt assisting on the sidelines and is confident that they will help the team on the road to a state title, he said.

“We’ll just take it one step at a time.”

Cross Country

After losing one of the best distance runners in the history of BHHS to graduation, cross country head coach Terry Axel is even more confident in the chances his girls’, and boys’, cross country teams have to win district titles.

“We’ve got a good squad of girls being led by Shaylin (Curtis),” he said. “And the boys team has a chance to take the district title this year, if we can get the numbers to come out to practice.”

The reason for Axel’s optimism is simple numbers. The more people the team can put in a race, the more points they can earn, and team titles are won by the team with the greatest number of points.

He admits that because cross country is an individual sport that the kids have to want the victory.

“They have to buy in,” Axel said. “They have to go, ‘I’m going to get up and run in the morning.’ Until a kid decides that they want the state title, until they buy in, they won’t get to that next level.”

The Bruin cross country team is currently led by only one senior, Nick Ensley, but Axel has hopes that two other senior boys, Scott McDougal and Tyler Edwards will be joining the team as soon as school begins.

Girls Soccer

The girls soccer team is led by just three seniors, Louie Deraita, Brianna Juarez and Jessica Fernandez, and according to them they bear some heavy responsibility this year.

“I think we’re expected to do a lot more now,” Deraita said when asked what those expectations are. “We have a tradition of winning the Far West League championship that we have to continue.”

Co-captain Juarez agrees that there is a pressure to win, but also admits that it is difficult to step up.

“I think it has been hard to be a leader,” she said. “Those girls who graduated last year were leaders and we looked up to them and now it’s our first year to be leaders.”

The team has their sights set, not only on a fifth straight league title, but on a state title.

“We want to win our first state playoff game,” Juarez said. “And then keep on winning to a state title.”

Second year head coach Fred Juarez has a game plan to accomplish the team goals and it involves more communication and ball control.

“We want to talk, make good passes and take advantage of the other team when their defense breaks down,” Coach said. 

“I think that we’ve got what it takes this year.”

One seemingly obvious problem facing the girls soccer program is the loss of a talented senior class.

Coach Juarez agrees that the loss has been hard to overcome but is quick to point out that the team has added a lot of young talent and speed with the freshman group that has joined the team.

Young agrees.

“He lost a ton of experience with the graduating class of 2011 that had several four-year starters,” Young said. “He has a lot of youth and inexperience but one of the things I think will give them the upper hand is that our girls soccer program already has a tradition of success. They are very competitive in the Far West League, having won a number of championships in a row. 

“That base is already there, and hopefully it’s just a matter of plugging the right people in the holes.”

Coach Juarez will be assisted this season by Chaulene Worthy who also coaches a team in the Brookings-Harbor Youth Soccer League.

Volleyball

“Nobody has high expectations for us,” senior Alisha Barbic said. “But we have high expectations for ourselves.”

Barbic, a member of the varsity BHHS volleyball squad was voicing what seemed to be the opinion of the entire team, including fellow seniors Whitney Floyd and Jewels Heredia.

“We have big shoes to fill,” Floyd said. “But we have the potential to take second in the Far West League.”

Heredia agreed but added that it would take the individuals on the team becoming a cohesive unit rather than a group of solitary players.

The Bruins volleyball team seems to be the hardest hit of all the fall sports teams by the loss of seniors; losing almost every starting player from the 2010 season.

According to Head Coach Lori Cooper, the loss of star players hasn’t reduced their chances at winning, it has only changed the methods they will employ to garner victory.

“We have little offense, so we’re going to have to be a defensive team,” Cooper said. “We have to be a scrappy team that plays really good defense. We have the ability to be in the playoff hunt, we just need to be consistent.”

Consistency is key for this team and Cooper says that the positive air about the players is because reduced expectations by the public has actually made them better players.

“This group is more relaxed,” Cooper said. “And while they worry, they are learning to combat that worry and overcome the frustrations that face them.”

Cooper, who is assisted by JV coach Robyn Hanneman, is optimistic about the team’s chances to place in the top part of the Far West League.

“Our goal should be to make the playoffs,” she said. “We should be in the top four. That has to be our goal.”

Team Schedules

The BHHS fall sports schedule was printed on the sports page of the Wednesday, Aug. 24 edition of the Pilot and can be clipped out for easy reference or found on the Pilot website at http://www. currypilot.com/sports.

The schedules for each of the teams can be found by going to the OSAA website at http://www.osaa.org and clicking on the ScoreCenter tab at the top and then finding the Bruins’ team page for each sport.