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By ANDREW GRIMM
WINTERSVILLE -- Those familiar with Indian Creek Redskins sports will recognize quite a few of the names on Coach Joe Dunlevy's roster, and he would not have it any other way.
Of the core group of nine players Dunlevy expects to be key contributors to his squad, four of them were key pieces of the football team this past fall, and most of them come from families that have long been a part of Indian Creek athletics.
"We have nine kids back who all lettered last year," he said. "They put a lot of time in between the end of last season and now. We have nine kids from nine good families that have taught them the proper work ethic to be successful. A lot of their parents have been involved in athletics as players and understand what it takes to be a good athlete and have provided these young men with the opportunity to be successful.
"They are a credit to their families and I am old enough to remember when their dads or moms played so I know from their parents why some of these kids have the work ethic and play with so much heart and so much effort."
The four players making the jump from the hardwood from the gridiron are junior Derrick Eakle, sophomore Trevor Fante, junior Brennon Norris and senior Andy Waggoner. Also potentially seeing time for the Redskins after playing football are senior Will Hopkins, sophomore Brock Lucas and senior Aaron Robinson.
"I love having football players," Dunlevy said. "If they have gone through Coach (Andrew) Connor's program, you know they are hard workers. Some of our kids play multiple sports and that is a credit to them. If they play for Andrew, I know they have a great work ethic."
The rest of Dunlevy's core group consists of junior Michael Allan, senior Nicholas Crawford, junior Austin Judson, senior Wyatt Pugh and senior Austin Yaich.
"Any of those nine kids can start on any given night you come to see us," Dunlevy said. "They are interchangeable. They are all pretty equal in terms of their abilities and their efforts. We have other good kids on the team but hose nine are the guys that we are going to depend on. There are nine of them that love the game and work hard every day."
The Redskins went 11-12 a year ago, and bowed out in the first round of the tournament. Dunlevy said he does set goals in terms of wins and losses, but simply asks for his kids to perform at the highest of their ability.
"Successful to me means achieving being the highest level of player you can be," he said. "It is high school so what that means in terms of wins and losses I don't know. What I do know is I have nine super kids that have really put the time in. As a coach, that's all you can ask them to do is to get to their potential and don't waste anything that they have. We talk a lot about that in the classroom, too. We want them to be as good as they can possibly be, whatever that may be. Not everybody can be Michael Jordan or LeBron James but you can work as hard as them."
"I have no expectations as far as wins and losses. I always say that we don't recruit, so we can't say that we had a great recruiting class and we should run the table, but we can say that hopefully we will make the most out of the kids in our school district."