Alberton teams gear up for 2014-15 season

ALBERTON – The Alberton High School football and volleyball teams are ready to make waves in Mineral County this year and the teams will need every tool at their disposal as both begin the season with a hurdle to face.

For the Panthers football team, they will have the home field advantage against cross county rival St. Regis. Coming off a year where Alberton was in a co-op with St. Regis, this year both communities have their own squads and are vying for Mineral County bragging rights.

For the Lady Panthers volleyball team, they face their first challenge playing multiple back-to-back games in a tournament in Drummond. Alberton High School Volleyball Head Coach Phil Taylen said he was confident the team would be ready.

Lady Panthers Volleyball

With only two returning seniors, the Lady Panthers are a young team but Taylen said his underclassmen were stepping up to the plate and contributing in a way that has him convinced the team will be competitive this year.

“We have two returning juniors who started most of the games last year,” Taylen said. “We have some good leadership on this team. We have a pretty good core for the varsity team. We have some sophomores that will also start.”

Taylen said the team has been working on familiarizing themselves with his offensive strategy that could be something new for fans of the team. It’s Taylen’s first year as head coach and he said he was hoping to show teams across the net something different this year.

“We are working a five-one offense,” Taylen said. “Our focus has been the offensive strategy. We are introducing a lot of new concepts to the players. I played a lot of two-man beach volleyball. The skills are the same but the offensive strategies are significantly different.”

Taylen said the five-one offense utilizes a designated player, no matter where she starts at the beginning of a play, to dictate where the offense is coming from on the court.

“We have that one position who will slot over no matter where she started and that gives us an advantage,” Taylen said. “It’s a way to create an offset advantage. It’s pretty obvious when they see us play that that’s what we are doing.”

The strength of the team, according to Taylen, lies in their ability to strike from different parts of the court which can help keep the opponent off balance.

“We have good outside hitting,” Taylen said. “That’s probably our biggest advantage. Both of our seniors are good outside hitters and are juniors are coming along. We anticipate a good season and we are excited about the possibilities.”

The first home game of the season is on Sept. 6 at 4:10 p.m. against Valley Christian.

Panthers Football

According to first year Alberton High School Football Head Coach Nick Weller, the first game of the 2014-2015 season should be an interesting one to watch for those in attendance.

That’s because many of the players on his team know their opponents from last year’s co-op arrangement with St. Regis. So when the Panthers come face to face with the St. Regis Tigers this Friday in Alberton, the audience will be watching a game where players know what each other are capable of and what skills they bring to the field.

Weller said that’s why he decided to shake things up with Panther football this year. He said the team would be unveiling a completely new type of offense he hopes will tip the balance in his team’s favor.

“We are going to run an offense that fits our players,” Weller said. “We obviously don’t have the team we had last year so we had to change things up. We have three good seniors so we will be leaning on them.”

Weller said he was familiar with how the St. Regis players approach the game and he said that could make the coaching match up just as important as the player match up.

“We don’t really know what they are going to run and they don’t really know what we are going to run,” Weller said. “That should make it a pretty interesting game.”

One thing the team has going for them this year, according to Weller, was a strong sense of who is in charge on the field.

“We have strong senior leadership,” Weller said. “That’s going to help. We also have some just great all-around athletes. We need to focus on our fundamentals. If our fundamentals are correct we have a good chance of being successful.”

Weller said, as a first year coach and new to six-man football, he was excited to bring something new to Mineral County high school football.

“It’s going to be a whole new brand of football,” Weller said. “I’m used to eleven-man football so we have had to adapt some of those things to six-man. We are going to be running something that is new to everyone and we need to game test it to see if it works.”

The first game of the season versus St. Regis is this Friday, Aug. 29, with kickoff at 7 p.m. in Alberton.