New Atlantic Head Football Coach Mike McDermott is looking for maximum effort from his players as they begin the 2016 season. “We’ve talked recently with our team that hey we want you compete. Just like we’ve done in practice, we want you to go out and compete. We want you to go hard and play hard.” McDermott said.  “We can correct missed assignments but it’s a little bit tougher to correct if you’re not playing hard. The opportunity is going to be there Friday night in our scrimmage to get some guys on film and see what we have, then get ready for Clarinda next Friday night.”

Coach McDermott takes over a program that won just one game last year but suffered through numerous injuries and was forced to play a lot of young players.  McDermott said he has been pleased with the effort from his players in summer workouts and early on in practice.  He said they were shooting for 70 players on the roster and fell just short of that with 61 players out this year.  That number is an improvement from last season and the Senior class is larger this year as well.

McDermott himself is a former player in Atlantic and was a long time member of the coaching staff previously.  He was Offensive Coordinator for the 2002 State Championship team under Head Coach Gaylord Schelling and he has spent time coaching numerous levels of the program.

Many familiar faces will be on McDermott’s staff including the former Head Coach he worked with.  Gaylord Schelling is coaching Junior Varsity and working with the Offensive Line.  Lee Saathoff is back as Defensive Coordinator after working with McDermott for many years under Schelling.  Justin Williams will work with the Running Backs and Outside Linebackers. Alan Jenkins will coach the Freshman team and will work with Wide Receivers and Defensive Backs. Brandon Crouse will work with the Defensive Line and Offensive Line. Coach McDermott said it’s been a smooth transition bringing those familiar coaches back together. “We a lot of discussions before the season of what kind of my vision was for them, and they were all on board with ‘Yep, that’s kind of where I fit in’. So we have really hit the ground running.” McDermott said.

Coach McDermott says there has been good competition for position battles and there are still some spots that are up for grabs. He said Zac Stork and John McConkey will be the stalwarts leading the charge on the Offensive Line. Garrett Franken and Jaxson Eden are battling for the Quarterback spot. Eden will spend some time at Running Back early due to a summer injury to last year’s starter Drake Roller.  They plan to ease Roller back into the mix. Noah Bruckner is looking to start at Fullback.  The Tight End position has Grant Podhajsky coming back. The guys battling for outside skill position playing time are Chase Mullenix, Austin Alexander, Dillon Sonntag, and Gratt Reed.

The Trojans have a scrimmage scheduled tonight at Red Oak and then will open up their 2016 campaign at home against Clarinda on August 26th.

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