Grow up quickly
BUFFALO TWP — John Gaillot is well aware of the challenge he and his coaching staff will face this season.
The Freeport football team rushed for 2,338 yards and 26 touchdowns as a team last season. Only 162 yards and one lone TD of that production returns in 2013.
Freeport passed for 638 yards and eight scores last season. Only one completion for 13 yards is back.
Gone is quarterback Brendan Lynch, who amassed more than 1,800 yards of offense and accounted for 21 touchdowns.
Gone, too, is running back Damon Smith, who rushed for 403 yards in a little more than five games before a knee injury ended his season.
Also departed is a stable of running backs who filled in admirably for Smith after he went down and helped Freeport to a 7-3 record and a playoff berth.
In the five years Gaillot has been the head coach, the Yellowjackets are 35-16.
This, though, may be his most challenging campaign.
“We have a lot athletic kids,” Gaillot said. “The only bad thing is we only have two full-time starters back and we have two more who were wideouts who only played half the snaps. Other than that, no one even saw varsity play.
“You can’t say it can’t get any worse because we could have to replace all 11 starters,” Gaillot added. “This is a big year. The key for us is how fast do those young kids grow up.”
It’ll have to be pretty quick.
There are no exhibition games for the Yellowjackets in the Allegheny Conference. Every game on the schedule is a league game.
Freeport does open the season with two home games against Kittanning and Ford City.
Also huge will be how junior Andrew Romanchak does under center. He certainly has worked hard to hone his craft, Gaillot said, working with a quarterback coach this winter.
The 6-foot-2, 185-pound Romanchak also has a strong junior varsity season last fall. He is a different kind of quarterback than Lynch.
“He has decent speed, but Lynch had tailback speed.,” Gaillot said. “We really don’t have that great speed. We’re still running the same offense, but we probably won’t have that big-play capability that we had with Brendan because he could make people miss and out-run people. We’ll be grinding, which I’m confident we can do.”
Senior Josh Brestensky will play tailback with Codey DiGiacobbe, Mike Troup also getting carries.
“We have hard-working blue-collar kids,” Gaillot said. “If we can be physical — we’re going to make mistakes — that will carry us through some games.”
Another factor for the Yellowjackets is nothing much is expected from the young roster. The players, Gaillot said, have handled those low expectations well.
“The kids know and they were upset, but they have an attitude of, ‘We know and we’ll see. We’ll show everybody.’”
