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Expect more passing to several receivers
by Gregory R. Norfleet · Sports · August 17, 2017


The Bears offense will look a lot different in 2017.


With the loss of arguably one of the best, if not the best, running backs in school history, West Branch football will shift from its emphasis on the run.

Last year, senior Luke Lenoch set records for rushing yards, points scored and touchdowns – a product of about 30 carries per game — and his loss to graduation left … wait.

Not only did Lenoch graduate, but so did four other of the eight players who ran the ball. And of those five, three of them – Lenoch, Cooper Kabela and Cale Donovan — topped the team’s ball-carrying statistics. Graduating gutted the team at running back.

Of the three who remain and return for the 2017 season, one is Beau Cornwell, now a junior, returning to the role of quarterback.

Cornwell showed he had the potential to threaten as a running quarterback, but a broken collarbone early in the 2016 season took that opportunity away. Now he has another chance.

Yet last season, co-quarterback and then-senior Brandon Rummellhart also found himself sidelined with an injury, so this year coaches are a bit leery about Cornwell getting hurt.

They have a couple backups, like freshman-sophomore quarterback Trey Eagle and a couple of varsity players whose names the coaches are keeping under wraps. However, none of the backups have that much-desired varsity experience.

In other words, without much depth at quarterback, will the Bears let Cornwell run much?

“Beau is healthy and looks good,” Assistant Head Coach and Offensive Coordinator John Hierseman said at Saturday’s Media Day. “And we want to keep him healthy.”

Hiereseman is in his fifth year on the coaching staff and his first as offensive coordinator, taking over for Jarod Tylee. He carries the job of finding new ways to move the ball. On the ground, he’s looking at sophomore Tanner Lukavsky and sophomore Wyatt Goodale, both new to the varsity running back position.

Hierseman said he has other running backs, but he expects these three to serve as the core.

“All will see some carries in every game,” he said. “All three look good, and they all have certain skills.”



Receivers

Head Coach Butch Pedersen and Hierseman both said they plan a roughly even 50-50 split between the run and the pass. Hierseman said the Bears probably ran the ball about 75 percent of the time last season.

But the shift is not solely due to the untested running backs. Hierseman’s got receivers.

Good receivers.

Several good receivers.

“We’ve got a really good core group,” the offensive coordinator said. “They’re as deep as they have been in a long time. They’re really good at every position and backup.”

In fact, West Branch can rotate in nine guys to catching duties: senior Luca Passeri, junior Evan O’Neil, senior and co-captain Ben Thompson, junior Brady Lukavsky, junior Zach Thompson, junior Brett Schiele — — senior and co-captain Jacob Graves, junior John Hatfield and sophomore Peter Espensen.

Pedersen tempered his assessment. This is young, junior-heavy team, he said, and it is one thing to catch a ball, and another thing to do it in a game.

“We hope to keep other teams off-balance,” he said of spreading the ball around. “We’re young at the receiving and skill positions.”

Pedersen said Cornwell is “throwing as well as I’ve seen,” so the receivers need to focus on their part.

Senior and co-captain Billy Friis said Cornwell has experience and “should be all right.”

Senior and co-captain Ben Thompson said he sees the receivers doing well in practice.

“They’re ready for a challenge,” he said. “They should be fine.”



Offensive line

We have to start by mentioning the Bears will see the return of all-state offensive lineman Jacob Barnhart, now a senior and co-captain.

But now that we’ve mentioned that, we want to skip to the end of Hierseman’s comments about the offensive line for this nugget of information:

“Our smallest (players) are Dalyn Pedersen and John Hierseman, and they’re both 210,” he said.

Let that sink in for a moment, and put the rest of his comments into perspective as we rewind to the beginning.

“Our offensive line looks good,” the offensive coordinator said.

Barnhart will step up to the line of scrimmage carrying a 6-6 frame and 300 pounds.

“He’s certainly a force,” Hierseman said.

That’s a bit of an understatement as the Bears last year made a highlight video just featuring Barnhart’s pancake blocks. He’s not so much making holes as he is carpeting the field with the other team’s jerseys.

Barnhart said that, looking around at practice, he likes what he sees in the other players.

“We’re getting better every day,” the co-captain said. “We could be pretty good. It depends on our offensive line.”

Hierseman said senior Andrew Black will step to the line as a guard and senior and co-captain Billy Friis is showing “really good” on the line. Jaden Hierseman is a junior and will play center. Dalyn Pedersen is a sophomore guard. And freshman Jeff Bowie stands 6-4 and weighs 225 at the guard position.

“It’s an ongoing process with the offensive line,” Hierseman said. “But they continue to gel.”

He wants to see the offense continue to work on technique, which they seem to do pretty well, but also remembering their assignments.

“This week we improved by leaps and bounds,” he said.

He gave credit to the offensive line’s development to first-year coach Jack Rummells, a 2010 graduate and standout lineman who in 2015 served a brief stint with the Jacksonville Jaguars professional football team.



Defense

Tyler Bailey coaches the defensive linebackers and sets the defense while Butch Pedersen calls the defensive plays.

Bailey said the secondary, corners and safeties make up the team’s top defensive strengths this season.

“They are the most experienced,” he said.

The defensive line also brings experience, Bailey said, but the linebackers are young and “definitely need work.”

Defense will run much of the same formations, but with some tweaks.

“Our goal is to be good in our base defense,” he said.

One of the toughest jobs – pass defense – will fall to co-captain and senior Ben Thompson, co-captain and senior Jacob “Cheese” Graves, junior Brett Schiele and sophomore Wyatt Goodale.

“They’ll do good,” he said.

Friis, Barnhart, Black and Dalyn Pedersen will bring “a lot of experience” to the defensive line.

“We’ll lean on Barnhart, who will eat up the middle,” Bailey said.

It will be hard for opponents to measure up to Barnhart, so he may see a lot of double coverage out of necessity. But Bailey said the line needs to pressure the quarterback when they suspect a passing play. Last season, pass defense was not among the Bears’ strengths, Bailey said.

“(The defensive line) will have to compensate for the relatively young linebackers,” he said.

More zone or man-to-man defense? A mix, Bailey said, like half and half.

West Branch has done it before, and this season “will try to expand on it.”

“It should make us more aggressive,” he said.



Special teams

Cornwell, Espensen and Javier Zamudio make up the kicking core on special teams.

Cornwell and Zamudio return with significant varsity experience, and Special Teams Coach Kevin Crosthwaite expects Cornwell to do most of the punting and Zamudio to do most of the kickoffs.

The three are battling it out for extra points and field goals, he said.

Returning to the kick-return spots are Brett Schiele and Tanner Lukavsky, who handled most of the work in 2016, as well as Graves. Wyatt Goodale will join the crew, too.

“We’ve got good experience coming back,” Crosthwaite said. “I look forward to seeing special teams play.”



Young team

With only seven seniors on the team, Pedersen calls 2017 a rebuilding year.

“The community needs to understand the word ‘patience,’” he said. “Even the coaches.”

Bailey agreed.

“This is a year of growing,” he said.

Both, like Hierseman, said they see a lot of potential for a good team, but hard work is necessary to get to that point.

“We’ll see how we do,” Bailey said. “There’s no reason we shouldn’t do well, but it’s a steep learning curve that should benefit us for years to come.”

Pedersen said the “very green” team needs to work on consistency, and the defense needs to be “more aggressive.”

“We’re timid now,” he said. “We need to attack.”

Thompson took the same position, but noted that “we just got the pads on” in practice.

“We need to hit more,” he said. “We need to be more aggressive.”

Friis said the team, overall, “feels pretty good,” and he sees leadership in all of the seniors, not just the captains.

“We have youth with some experience,” he said.

Thompson said the only game he or the team should concern itself with is “the next game,” especially with a young team.

“But they are starting to come around,” he said. “There’s still learning to do. We need to be ready for West Liberty.”

He said the team “communicates well.”

“We’re all on the same page,” he said, which started over the summer during 7-on-7 scrimmages.

The team also has a lot of average-sized players – those in the 5-7 to 5-8 range – and Pedersen said the Bears need to find ways to make up for that.

Bailey said West Liberty will be a good test to open the season on Aug. 25. The Comets spread the ball around and are good at throwing.

Pedersen said the neighbors south of Interstate 80, which lost all but one game in a two-year span three and four years ago, saw marked improvement with a 5-4 season last year.

“West Liberty probably has the best team in 25 years,” the head coach said, also noting they stand up a class from West Branch in 1A.

In Week 2, the Bears take on Class 3A West Burlington-Notre Dame, “who is always fast,” Bailey said.

Pedersen added West Burlington to its schedule a few years ago, when it was still in Class 2A, but that school bumped up in size enough to jump up to 3A, and the Iowa High School Athletic Association still kept them on the Bears’ schedule.

“I don’t like that type of school on our schedule, but we’ll do the best we can,” he said.

At mid-season, West Branch will take on the Bellevue Comets who, like West Burlington, handed the Bears one of three regular-season losses in 2016.

“We’ll have to play assignment football” to ward off its spread offense, Bailey said.