Going green

By Pete Chiodo

August 27, 2008 August 26, 2008 11:30 pm

— “I’ll tell you what, it’s been an adventure.”
So says Allegheny College head football coach Mark Matlak, summing up the Gators’ preseason camp. It seems that the 2008 Gators — who scrimmage Thiel on Thursday at 7 p.m. at Robertson Field — are a wee bit on the young side.
“There are so many green guys,” said Matlak. “It’s like teaching a freshman team all over again. So that’s been an interesting experience this year. This is the first time for our staff that we’ve had such young guys and (we’re) teaching guys how to play.”
It seems that graduating 28 seniors, which AC did after last year’s 5-5 campaign, has taken a stiff toll.
According to Matlak, “It’s just the guys we’re getting ready to play are either seniors that haven’t played much, and all the underclassmen haven’t played much either.
“We got our work cut out for us.”
Injuries haven’t helped matters.
“We had 23 injuries on the list on (Monday),” said Matlak. “We have 23 out of 115, so that’s a lot of guys dinged up. And we haven’t even scrimmaged yet.
“That’s why I said, it’s been an adventure.”
The many vacancies have created some interesting position battles. Tailback, for example, is being slugged out between junior Rodney Still and sophomore Matt Deivert. Still led the Gators’ ground game with 459 yards and five touchdowns in 2007. Deivert, while playing in only half of the games last year, came on strong towards the end of the season and followed Still’s tally with 203 yards and one TD.
“(Still and Deivert have) looked really good in camp,” said Matlak. “That’s been a real positive sign. They’re bigger from a year ago and I think they are better.”
Fullback was also being contested between senior Matt Cellini and sophomore David Tate. Yet, Tate has gone down with an injury, so Cellini will be back in the position where he gained 171 yards and two touchdowns a year ago.
“(Tate’s injury) puts a little crimp in things,” Matlak said. “But Matt’s done a good job, so we’ll go with Matt.”
The running backs, whomever they end up being, will be taking hand-offs from quarterback T.J. Salopek, one of the brighter points on last year’s squad.
As a sophomore, Salopek won out the position early in the campaign and finished 2007 with 149 completions on 247 attempts for 1,608 yards. He threw seven touchdowns and was picked off 12 times.
Allegheny’s receiving corps suffered a number of hits to graduation last year (Jim Lieb, Shane Sullivan, Pete Obourn, etc.). However, Matlak is pleased with the crew that will be replacing them.
“I think we got a good set of wide-outs,” he said. “I think Jake Vite and Bobby Burkes have clearly been the cream of the crop from the wide-out corps. Pat Kahle from Franklin and T Hartford are probably the next guys. We feel good about those guys. And I think we have some young kids that are going to be decent.”
Of those guys, Vite saw the most passes last year, catching 19 for 272 yards and two touchdowns.
As for the offensive line, well that’s pretty young.
“On the offensive line we have two seniors — Bob Somplatsky and Andy Stas,” Matlak said. “All the rest are rookies.”
Calling the plays for Allegheny this year will be tackles/tight ends coach Travis Gillespie. He’ll be taking over for former offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Andy McKenzie who is now the quarterbacks coach at Holy Cross.
“Andy left us a good foundation,” said Matlak. “We’re just building off his foundation.”
As for the defense...
“All the linebacking, all the secondary, were all seniors,” Matlak said.
Ouch.
“Ouch — yeah.”
At least the D-line has some playing time under its belt, bringing back a long list of players like Craig Lawrence, Doug Macik, Billy Jones, Andrew Mihalcin, Nick Silva, and Nick Duca.
“We have a little depth there,” said Matlak. “A couple of them are knicked up. But I’m pretty pleased with what we have on the defensive line.”
As for the rest of the squad...
“The reward is seeing them progress,” said Matlak. “How fast are they going to pick it up? How well are we teaching them? That’s why we’re doing this. We’ll keep teaching, and we’re trying to bring them along and staying positive.
“We’ll have to see how the guys do on Thursday.”