Mayhem’s Game of the Week-Bensalem @ Upper Dublin (Week 3)
Tagged under: District 1, Gameday Hub, News, pfn
Michael Pietrangelo | September 13, 2023
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The Game:
Bensalem @ Upper Dublin
Thursday, September 14, 2023
Kickoff: 7 pm
Cardinal Stadium
800 Loch Alsh Ave, Fort Washington, PA 19034
The Deets:
Head Coach: Alexander Houston (3rd Season)
League: Suburban One-Continental Conference(6A)
Season: (0-3) overall (0-0) Conference
Last Week: Lost, 33-0 to Pennridge
Owl’s Notables: The Owls have been through a gauntlet of games to start the season. They have been outscored by their opponents 75-0 in those contests. I spoke with Coach Houston briefly to get his perspective on the lack of success and where he believes there could be improvements made. “We keep killing ourselves with penalties and mental lapses. If we can play more disciplined football, I believe we will start to see some more success on the field. Our off-season began on Jan. 3rd, We’re putting the work in now we have to translate that to the field. We start 12 sophomores, and they are growing, if we can keep this group together, success isn’t too far away. I knew when I took this job 3 years ago, there would be some rough patches. Our initial season going 5-5 with a senior-laden group, masked some of the weak spots and deficiencies in our program. There is no shortcut to success, we just have to keep pushing and good things will happen for us.” I next wanted to know what Coach thought his squad needed to do on the offensive side of the ball to be successful against the Cards and he responded, “Offensively, we have to be able to run the ball effectively in order to have more offensive success. That will take some pressure off of our sophomore quarterback and give us some tempo and continuity. We’ve been good at not turning the ball over at a high clip, which is one of our program goals.” After being asked the same, but of his defense, the leader responded, “Defensively, stop the run and pressure the quarterback. Additionally, we need to tackle better. We gave up some big plays this season that we were in a position to make, now we have to make them.” After wrapping up our conversation I asked Coach Houston who he thought I should feature this week and he said without hesitation, “I recommend Aidan Mayfield, he is a real hard-nosed and talented player. He works and plays extremely hard. He had a huge INT last week and probably would have 2-3 touchdowns on the season if not for untimely penalties. I think his future is bright and he has definitely been a bright spot in this early portion of the season.” After hearing all about Aidan, you know I had to hit him up and get his perspective on this week’s game and the early season. His response to the lack of success was simply put, “I believe if we begin to work together every play, we will have much better success as a team. That’s where I’d say we need the most improvement.” As usual, my next two questions were about the offense and the defensive sides of the ball. Aidan’s first response was, “Offensively, every individual has to do their job, and we have to minimize all the mistakes like penalties that have and can cost us points.” He then added, “Defensively I think we do a good job. We just have to make tackles on first contact. And we can’t blow any assignments (coverage).”
Head Coach: Bret Stover (21st Season)
League: Suburban One-Continental Conference(6A)
Season: (0-1) overall (0-0) Conference
Last Week: Lost, 42-7 to North Penn
Cardinal’s Notables: The Cards are a shell of the team that went 14-1 a year ago and also captured a District 1 5A Championship. This is common though when you graduate so many seniors that were starters. Week 1 saw them travel to Kennett and walk away with a non-conference 21-0 victory. Weeks 2 and 3 however were blowout losses to Central Bucks West & North Penn. This Cardinal team has a lot of growing to do and is in line for a massive amount of playing time which bodes well for future squads, and I think head Coach Bret Stover agrees. When I caught up with Coach Stover earlier this week, I asked about the back-to-back losses that seem to be very uncommon around Fort Washington in recent memory and the improvements they needed to make as the season continues and he said, “We need to improve in all three phases of our game. We are so young and inexperienced that we need to just continue to improve each and every week.” Next, I needed to know about that Offense and what needed to be done to have success against the Owls. Coach Stover replied, “We must control the ball and keep it away from them.” Defensively the coach said, “We must avoid giving up big plays in the running and passing game. They have some athletes who can make plays if given the opportunity.” This week’s featured athlete was highly recommended by Coach Stover and is Senior Captain WR/S Chris Kohlbrenner. Chris is a 3x All-League selection at Safety and was selected to the All-State team this past season. When I sat down with Chris, the senior leader had this to say about those tough back-to-back losses and what this young squad has learned about themselves so far. “We’ve got a lot to learn on both offense and defense, but I think one thing we’ve learned about ourselves is we don’t quit. We know that those scores and the way we played in the past two weeks don’t reflect us as a team. We know we can get so much better and know there is so much to fix so we expect to look like a whole different team in these upcoming games.” The All-State Safety then said, “Offensively we’ve got to stay with our fundamentals and beat them up front. Winning at the line of scrimmage is crucial. We also need to be able to have a balanced rushing and passing attack versus them.” Chris responded to my last question with a simple answer,“Defensively we’ve got to listen to our coaches, and we have to be the lower and more physical team.”
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*Photos this week were compiled from Daniella Heminghaus, Shannon O’Sullivan, & Mike Apice
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