The St. Pius football team will start spring football practice on Monday.
Sort of.
The Golden Lions will be conducting a virtual spring football practice after school hours. Position coaches will meet with their players on the Zoom platform, with the offense going on Mondays and Wednesdays and the defense meeting on Tuesday and Thursdays.
It’s called making the best of a crazy situation.
“The kids are going stir crazy and the coaches are going stir crazy,” St. Pius coach Paul Standard said. “We have been doing this with our quarterbacks for a couple of weeks. Now we’re encompassing the whole team.”
St. Pius may not need as much on-the-field training as most other programs. The Golden Lions have most of the contributors back from last year’s 6-6 team that lost to Woodward Academy in the second round of the Class AAAA playoffs. There were only nine seniors on that team and there were seven sophomores and two freshman who started.
“Not having spring practice isn’t going to kill us, but it really would have benefitted those rising sophomores,” Standard said.
St. Pius has good numbers returning and Standard speaks highly of the senior leadership that will be coming back this fall. He points out center Charlie Long and tight end Casey ver Meulen, who will both be starting for the third year.
Dennis O’Shea will return at quarterback, where he started the final four games, and veterans Mason Benefield and Cameron Wingo are back at running back and Jack Graham returns at fullback. R.J. Brewster is back at wide receiver.
The defense is led by all-region linebacker Walker Stephens, a two-year starter, and defensive back Jack Tchienchow, who started last season as a freshman. Ver Muelen also starts on the defensive line, where he was first-team all-region a year ago.
Also returning on at linebacker is Cameron Debose and Shug Bentley, who started in the middle as a freshman last season and also plays fullback. Returning on the defensive line is Antonio Walker, Joey Sanfilippo, Anderson Crawford and Camden Wooden. Cameron Debose is back at linebacker and Austin Taylor and Cameron Cainon return in the secondary. Kicker Ryan Kirschner also returns.
“We’ve got some good experience coming back,” Standard said. “They’ve been doing a great job in the off-season. I’m excited about this group.”
The Golden Lions got booted up another classification and landed in Region 5, a predominantly DeKalb County league that includes two-time region champion Southwest DeKalb, Decatur, Lithonia, King, Stone Mountain and Fulton County’s Northview.
St. Pius will not play rival Marist this season – scheduling complications prevented an interruption between the rivalry – but have non-region games against Flowery Branch, Blessed Trinity, Westminster and Cedar Shoals.
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