Live Oak had one of those teams that was three to four years in the making last year.
The Acorns went 9-2 overall, came in second in the Mt. Hamilton Division. But most of those players have graduated and no one will have any sympathy for those who are charged with carrying on the high level of expectations the program has for itself.
And the boys are responding.
“They knew that they were losing a lot of quality teammates and they just worked hard in the off season in the weight room,” said coach Mike Gemo. “They put the work in all summer long. The guys are ready to do.”
Live Oak does have a couple of constants in runningback Jacob Ryder and defensive end Zach Heffernan who are senior leaders this year along with Tyler Souza and Garrett Cardona.
“They helped push the younger guys so they would understand what we’re doing. They were a big help with everybody.”
Mix that in with new faces, including quarterback Jonathan Singleton, who as a sophomore will be tasked with putting his own stamp on the program.
“I knew he was a good athlete and he’s picking up the offense really well right now, Gemo said. “He’s taken a nice leadership role on the offense and has done exactly what we’ve needed him to do. He’s still making young sophomore mistakes, but they’re all fixable.”
Singleton does have some familial experience to draw on. His uncle was part of a championship winning team in the 1987 as quarterback.
Gemo said Singleton just jumped right in and has the chops necessary to be a good quarterback.
“He’s got a little quarterback in his bloodline,” Gemo said.
Souza will join Nate Camacho as the linebacking corps returning from last year, but Live Oak is still working to get three others to full the spots left over.
“We’re still trying to find the right five right now,” Gemo said. “We’ve got a couple of weeks, but we’re trying to find the right five.”
Cardona is also going to get looks at linebacker and Jaime Martinez is making a name coming up from the JV squad last year.
“We have a couple of sophomores battling to see if they get playing time. We’re just mixing that five around.”
In the secondary, Gemo said he will look to Alex Cornejo to see a lot of time as he did last year.
“We’re still trying to find which is best on the other side,” Gemo said.
At safety there is some experience with Eric Payne and there are some guys who are pushing him along.
Live Oak will get an extra week to prepare as the Acorns will not start off in Week 1 with everyone else. Instead they will take their bye week this week and kick things off on Sept. 2 at Christopher in Gilroy.
The Cougars will be entering the contest with a game under their belts having played Gilroy on Aug. 26.
Christopher is in a similar boat as Live Oak in that the team has some new faces in key spots.
But where Live Oak has high expectations to live up to, Christopher is trying to make up for a down year that saw the Cougars go winless in the top Gabilan Division.
From there, Live Oak gets into the annual El Toro Bowl game before closing out the nonleague season against Gilroy.
Both of those teams retooled since last year when the teams won a combined five games.
“We’re trying to win all three games. We did it last year and we’re going to try to do it again this year.”
Improvement is always the motto of Gemo and the Acorons, who stress being better than they were the week before.
The key to that is making sure some of the younger players are ready to go following the nonleague schedule.
“We’re trying to get our younger kids a lot of experience and hopefully that experience turns into Ws for us.”
Live Oak will not have the benefit of a bye-week before heading into league play this year, but the coaching staff is undaunted by the challenge.
The Acorns will have no chance to rest of their laurels as Sept. 23 features Piedmont Hills in a rematch of last year’s game that got chippy at points.
From there will be Leigh who put a scare into Live Oak for a half before the Acorns won by 14 in the second half.
Every week looks to get tougher after that as Live Oak will then travel to Lincoln and Santa Teresa before returning home Oct. 21 to square off against power house Oak Grove.
