PRINCETON FOOTBALL

Members of the 2021 Princeton High School football team include, from left, front row, Andrew Rhoades, Logan Smith, Luke Kelly, Kaleb Thomas, Evan Houck, Tyler Brown, Kelby Thomas; middle row, Clay Evans, Tyler Coffman, Hunter Foster, Talan Holt, Jayce Davis, Nicolas Rubio, Roman Birge; back row, Ethan Blackburn, Ethan Rhoades, Gavin Power, Wes Hashman, Gabe Zeider, Dylan Girdner, Mason Robinson and Sam Johnson. Not pictured is Cooper Boxley.

NEW FACES, SAME GOALS FOR PRINCETON TIGERS

For each of the past two seasons, the Princeton Tigers came into the year predicted to finish in the middle of the pack by their peers. In both seasons, Princeton closed the year as Grand River Conference tri-champions.

If head coach Nathan Powell is to go three-for-three on conference championships since returning to take the reins of his alma mater ahead of the 2019 season, however, it might be his biggest feat yet.

Make no mistake, no one is writing off Princeton, not after what the team has accomplished in each of the past two seasons. But the Tigers had 10 players who earned All-Grand River Conference honors in 2020, eight of which were also named all-district players by the Missouri Football Coaches Association. All 10 of those players were seniors. Princeton will attempt to keep its streak of GRC title runs alive with a group of players that possess very little varsity experience collectively.

“We do, obviously, lose a lot from last year,” Princeton head coach Nathan Powell said. “When you have a chance to have a really old group like we did last year, it was really good to see them have success, but we pushed them all year to be good leaders because we knew this would be the situation this year.”

Princeton has just 22 kids out for football in 2021 and of those 22, 17 are freshmen or sophomores. Being able to play a full junior varsity season was big for the Tigers because the freshmen from that team are now sophomores that Princeton will lean heavily on this year. The youth factor will have its downfalls, but

2021 SCHEDULE

2020 DATE OPPONENT RESULT

8/27 @ Mid-Buchanan 6-41 9/3 MIDWAY 38-19 9/10 @ Trenton n/a 9/17 MILAN 8-39 9/24 @ Putnam County 38-6 10/1 MAYSVILLE 30-14 10/8 POLO 36-6 10/15 @ South Harrison 28-6 10/22GALLATIN 28-18 10/29Districts, TBA HEAD COACH

Nathan Powell - third year

Career Record: - 15-6

Last Year’s Awards: Ben Berwanger, first team All-GRC, all district; Dakota Thomas, first team All-GRC, all-district; Brayden Summers, first team AllGRC, all-district; Blaze Siemer, first team All-GRC, all-district; Eli Henke, first team All-GRC, all-district; Zeb Schwartzkopf, first team All-GRC, all-district; Ashton Berndt, second team AllGRC, all-district; Justin Rhoades, second team AllGRC, all-district; John Birge, honorable mention All-GRC; Riley Rhoades, honorable mention All-GRC

Powell sees some positives mixed in as well.

“It is both good and bad,” Powell said. “There are a lot of things we took for granted last year. Kids knew their role and knew their responsibility. This year it is slowing it down and doing a lot more teaching early. But, at the same time it has been kind of exciting. We have kids doing things we didn’t know they would be able to do right now. I think the potential is there to have another solid year, but we aren’t going to start off at the level we did last year, obviously, or even the year before that. We want to play better every week and get to the end of the season where we are still healthy and playing well.”

Last season Princeton’s quarterback situation was far from crystal clear as the Tigers looked to find the right fit at signal caller. Senior Zeb Schwartzkopf was handed the reins, only for an injury to take him out early in the season. That thrust Logan Smith, the younger brother of Princeton’s all-time leading passer Andrew Smith, into the position. Smith had his moments, but the Tigers ended up using mostly a Wildcat-style offense, directly snapping the ball to running backs Ben Berwanger and Eli Henke.

This year, Smith is slated back into the quarterback position, giving Princeton a little stability at a position that certainly lacked it a season ago.

It’s much more stable,” Powell said. “Last year when we had a couple of running backs like Eli and Ben it was just really easy to say ‘let’s just snap it to them and let them go.’ But, Logan played quarterback all through the JV season, so he got a lot of reps as far as that went. He got some varsity snaps too, when we subbed that package in. This year, though, we are going to be much more quarterback-led with our offense and Logan has done a good job with it. We aren’t ever going to ask our quarterback to take over a game for us. We want to keep things pretty balanced offensively.”

Behind Smith, freshman Clay Evans will be the Tigers backup should they need one. Powell did note, however, that the Wildcat formation hasn’t been thrown out of the arsenal. Should Smith go down, the Tigers still have that in place to take pressure off of a freshman quarterback if need be.

Behind Smith is Andrew Rhoades, another one of the very few players returning with varsity experience on the offensive side of the ball. Powell’s first year at Princeton saw a variety of players carry the ball, however, last year Berwanger and Henke took up the bulk of the carries. But Rhoades was one of a handful of other players who did get carries at the varsity level a season ago. He should be the primary ballcarrier for the Tigers in Powell’s run-first offense, but Tyler Brown, just a freshman, turned heads this offseason, earning himself at least a share of the carries this fall.

“Andrew Rhoades got a lot of experience for us last year and then had a great JV season as far as that went,” Powell said. “We were going to lean on him, but at our summer camp Tyler Brown really did a good job performing, so we are going to give him a lot more of the load. Between those two we should have a pretty good balance.”

Powell’s teams will always be centered around the running game, but the Tigers do have some athletes at receiver and tight end that they will look to get the ball to. Kaleb Thomas, Talan Holt, Luke Kelly, Kelby Thomas and Gavin Power should all see opportunities with the ball in their hands at points this season as the Tigers look to get as many athletes involved as possible to try and find the production lost by Henke and

Photo Courtesy of Terri Wilson Kelly

Sophomore Logan Smith will be the Tigers’ quarterback in 2021.

Berwanger’s graduations.

“Last year Eli and Ben probably carried the ball 90 percent of the time,” Powell said. “This year we just can’t ask any one or two kids to do that, so I think you are going to see much more balance. Ideally we have got the ball in multiple people’s hands.”

The Tigers’ line up front is completely rebuilt from last season as well. Despite the group being young, however, they impressed Powell over the summer by how quickly they picked up on the schemes and came together as a unit. A lot of those players will be asked to go both ways on Friday night’s this year with just 22 players out.

On the defensive side of the ball, however, Princeton does have some experience coming back. At defensive back Kelly is back after being a varsity starter at cornerback a year ago. Rhoades saw a lot of time at safety for the Tigers and Kaleb Thomas got some starts at cornerback as well. While it doesn’t represent much, Princeton is thrilled to have that much experience returning at any position this season. Holt will join that group, putting another athlete at safety. That has Princeton feeling pretty good about limiting the opposition's big-play potential this year.

Princeton linebackers won’t have near the experience with Brown, the freshman running back, playing at the middle linebacker position. Gavin Power will fill one of the other spots and the Tigers will roll the dice so to speak, placing quarterback Smith at the other backer position.

Mason Robinson and Hunter Foster will give Princeton some experience at the defensive tackle spots after playing there quite a bit a season ago. The hope is that the duo can force teams to the edge where the Tigers’ athletes can give chase. A couple of players who weren’t out for football last season will also be on the line for the Tigers this year.

“Really the key for us this year (defensively) is keeping those guys up front fresh,” Powell said. “Then our back end, we have enough kids out there that I think we feel pretty good athletically. Schematically we thought about changing some stuff on defense, but again, at camp everything looked good and those kids know what we are doing and that’s what we ask them to do. We aren’t building around one or two kids. It’s a total package of speed and everyone doing their job. If everyone can get lined up and do their job, then defense kind of comes easy.”

What will benefit the Tigers is that they are far from the only young team in the Grand River Conference this year. Several teams that have been title contenders in recent seasons will be looking for new quarterbacks, running backs and linemen.

“Really, last year, it seemed like we were one of the few teams that were old,” Powell said. “I think that is kind of the wild card this year, everyone is kind of rebuilding. No one really knows what is going to happen. That’s what’s fun, too. You don’t have to worry about ‘okay this team is the hammer.’ Every week is going to be new. Trust me, when you have got young kids you never know. One team might look great one week and then the next week they don’t show up. The conference, I think, will be wide open.”

Princeton opens its season tonight, traveling to Faucett to take on Mid-Buchanan, the team that was the Class 1 state runner-up last year.