Ottawa hopes solid offseason leads to turnaround campaign

With the summer workouts coming to an end, Ottawa head coach Chad Gross said he’s encouraged with the progress his group has made in the offseason and is looking forward to seeing what the Pirates can accomplish.

“We have a lot of returning kids, 18 I believe, and also a lot of those kids can play a number of different spots for us. We’re going to have a lot of competition within the group,” said Gross, whose squad finished last season at 1-8 overall and 0-5 in the Interstate 8 Conference. “It’s a little like putting a puzzle together. We feel we have a lot of good pieces to that puzzle, now it’s just finding where they go to not only make the kids better, but our team better.”

The Pirates skipper, now in his eighth season, said for him the summer workouts are a time where he looks at finding out what the clear strengths and weaknesses are at both the individual and team levels. He also said relaying the message to his players that this is “Your team” has been a focal point.

“I think as a coach you go into every offseason with different things you feel the program in general needs to improve on as well as giving players feedback on what they need to improve on,” Gross said. “It’s really never an overhaul what we want to do schematically, but more what can we do a little different with the players we’ll have to make them and us more successful.

“Accountability was a big talking point this offseason. We want them to build trust in one another as well as trust in us as coaches and instill to them that this is their season. I feel like they really took that to heart and have taken ownership over things. Our attendance for offseason things, especially in the weight room, was the best it’s been in years.”

Gross said during the summer he and his coaching staff tried a number of different things and combinations to see what may work best.

“I feel like the summer stuff is moving kids around and doing a lot of different things to gauge what we will be heavily focusing on when the official practices start,” Gross said. “As a coaching staff we’ll sit down and talk about what we think those things will be and maybe what thing we feel we may not have to go over as much because the kids already have a good grasp on it.”

While he said he feels the group has gotten better as a whole since the end of last season, a couple of players have really shined during the summer.

“Owen Sanders has looked really good in summer workouts and our joint scrimmages,” Gross said of his senior receiver who had 18 receptions for 295 yards and two touchdowns and was a Times All-Area second-team selection. “He has put on some weight and muscle, but he still moves so well. He’s also a tremendous basketball player. I mean, the other day he had like six dunks in a summer league game and then came out here for a scrimmage and made a bunch of great catches. His recruiting for football, and I’m guessing for basketball, has really picked up.

“I don’t think [senior returning starting quarterback] Mark Munson [77-131, 960 yards, 5 INT, 6 TDs] missed anything this summer. He was always there. He’s not a huge imposing kid, but he’s gotten bigger and stronger as well. When Mark sets his feet, throws the ball and it’s on time, he’s looked really good. That will be a key for us, giving him time in the pocket.”

Gross also mentioned that seniors Evan Paris [OL/DL], Logan Mills [RB/LB], Ethan Poutre [FB/LB] and Archer Cechowicz [RB/S] have looked good, the latter returning after missing the final seven games last season with a shoulder injury.

Ottawa opens the regular season Aug 29 on the road against Plano before hosting rivals Streator and La Salle-Peru the following two weeks.