Story by Jacob Holmes:
As high school football season rapidly approaches, the Michigan Lutheran Titans are excited to return to the field and build on their strengths.
Head coach Rich Zeiger feels that his players have made noticeable improvements from last season, despite the team’s smaller size. “I feel real good about the ten that we’ve got, but I sure wouldn’t mind having 12 or 16,” he said.
Zeiger singled out three players that he feels will be team leaders this season, seniors Brock Rudlaff and Cory Burnett and junior Ahren Sempert. “Brock Rudlaff has been a team leader since he showed up as a freshman,” Zeiger said. “We don’t really name team captains, but if we did he would have a ‘C’ on his shirt.”
Rudlaff said that he’s hoping to improve on his tackling. “When I started getting bigger, I realized that I can hit harder, and this year I’m hoping to take that one step further.”
Sempert will be the Titans’ quarterback with Zeiger saying that he has really stepped up and that the team follows him well. Sempert said that he’s hoping to make better decisions this year as quarterback.
Zeiger also said that he’s looking forward to the performance of Burnett, and that the growth in his maturity is a big part of that. Burnett said that he aims to run harder all the way through the season, and has been doing agility drills during the offseason.
Zeiger said that one of the Titans’ strengths on both offense and defense will be their ability to learn. “We’re very young so we’re very moldable,” he said. “One of the big things is seeing how coachable these kids are.”
Michigan Lutheran went 1-7 last year, but Zeiger said that his team was never discouraged by the team’s struggles, and that was one of the biggest things
that they could build on.
The Titans will begin the season by facing last year’s 8-Man state champion Lawrence High School on Aug. 28.
