With only one losing season in his 14 year tenure Coach Mike Conners is concerned with keeping that as a single. “We’re an 11 man football team” he said. “11 on ‘O’ and 11 on ‘D’, even our QB will be playing both ways”
From a 6-3 team in 2006 the Red Raiders lost 17seniors of which 15 starting spots were vacated. This years roster sports 38 names but names don’t necessarily amount to success. “It’s the most numbers I’ve ever had but the least amount of depth”.
When Fulton has the ball they will rely heavily on 3-year starting quarterback Mike Clark (Sr, 5’10 180). “Clark is the catalyst” Conners said. Other offense keys will be Jake Osborn (Jr, 6’2 205) TE, Connan Ingham (Sr, 6’3 230) OL and Pat Cochrane (Sr, 6’2 270) OL. “Our first 11-12 guys are pretty good but after that we have absolutely nothing” Conners said. “Unless we can bring our younger kids along we’re in a lot of trouble and we don’t want to bring our JVs up, we like to keep the young kids down.”
Staying with the 4-4 and 5-3 defenses Connors keeps his optimism in check. “We lost one of our captain Drew Kinney, that just killed us” he said “He’s out for the season with a dislocated shoulder; if we get any injuries we’re in trouble.” He did however praise the work of his linebacking corp. “Osborn and Landers have looked great”. Besides Jeff Landers (Sr, 5’11 185) other keys will include Vinney Martinez (Jr, 5’11 185) LB and Mike Fortier (Sr, 5’10 175) DB.
The recent scrimmage against strong contenders Carthage and Indian River did show signs of hope. “We did pretty good.” Conners said. “We whacked with two pretty good teams and we didn’t have any problem with them”.
Despite that strong showing Conners can’t get away from his “glass half empty” worries. “If we run into a week where we get 2-3 injuries, it’s over. We always run into this problem, unless we run into a miracle were we get some depth, it could be a long season” Conners stated.
“We’re trying to find an identity. Obviously we want to win the league title and make sectionals” the 15 year head coach said. “We have to survive the first 3 weeks and improve and then I think we’ll be an ok football team. We have some talent, we just have to bring up some of the younger kids and have them play some good football.”
2007 Roster