Sobrato knows it will have a tough test out the gate when the Bulldogs host Christopher Saturday.
The Cougars are coming off a league-championship season thanks in part to quarterback Matt Adamkiewicz.
“(Adamkiewicz) is a hard person to replicate,” said Sobrato coach Tony Holmes. “For us, the only thing we can do is our best to keep him a pocket passer. Keep him inside the tackles and keep him from making us run east to west.”
A year ago, the junior had 3,310 passing yards and 34 touchdowns, leading to a Monterey Bay League, Pacific Division title.
But three of his four favorite targets from a year ago have graduated as has defensive stud Jacob Moen.
So going into Saturday’s game—slated to kick off at 1:45 p.m.—coach Holmes knows there’s going to be challenges for his boys, but at the same time, there’s opportunity.
“We’re going to bring our seniors up and put body-on-body and force those guys to get out in space,” Holmes said. “There’s no secret about that at all: That’s what we’re going to do with inexperience.”
Holmes said he wants to get the newer Christopher receivers to have to play perfect against his team and is hoping to let season-opening jitters slow them down a bit.
That said, the Cougars have been in this position before. Adamkiewicz was a rookie quarterback on varsity a year ago and settled into his role nicely coming up from the junior varsity ranks. It was, in large part, because of Christopher’s depth that he was able to get himself ready for the big stage.
Holmes said he knows he’s outmanned against Christopher, but he will counter it with kids he knows can step up in those big situations and get off to a big start.
“The way you battle that is you have to go out there and put points up early, fast,” Holmes said. “There is no third or fourth quarter back-and-forth with a beast. You have to tame the beast in the first or second quarters.”
Holmes said he saw flashes of what his boys can do at the Blossom Valley Athletic League Jamboree over the last weekend. He said once his boys got rolling and got a little swagger about them from hitting someone other than each other, there was some good take aways from the day.
“It gave us an opportunity to show our offense and defense. The boys went into it and we started off slow. But as the night went on, it picked up. We played extremely well; a lot better than we expected to do.”
As Sobrato goes into this season eyeing a league title, it knows there is still some work to do.
Holmes implemented a new offense and defense, going away from the Wing-T of the past couple of years.
He said he knows his boys need to see it work and that is the biggest thing he hopes will be the result of Saturday’s game.
“They’re still a little bit weary about the outcome,” Holmes said. “But they have believed in it as time has gone on and it’s proven they believe in it after a certain period of time.
“But by the end of the Christopher game, I want them to look back and say, ‘hey, it works.’”
Keep up with the action on Twitter by following Cheeto Barrera @MHTCheeto.
