Editor’s note: This is the third in a five-part series previewing Lake County’s varsity football teams as they prepare for the 2021 season. The Upper Lake Cougars will be featured in part four.
LAKEPORT — There are exceptions, but the Clear Lake High School varsity football team is a mostly inexperienced and mostly untested group of 20 athletes as it embarks on a 2021 season filled with all kinds of uncertainties, not the least of which is the ongoing surge of COVID-19 cases flooding the county.
Despite all of that, Cardinals head coach Mark Cory likes the hand he’s been dealt as Clear Lake emerges from a coronavirus hibernation that was a lost 2020 season.
Last year
While last season was canceled for Coastal Mountain Conference, which includes all of Lake County and the North Central League I, most other schools in the Redwood Empire and Northern California ended up playing in the spring. That wasn’t the case for the CMC, which voted in late January to pull the plug on all fall and winter sports (except cross country) so that spring sports wouldn’t have to fight for athletes and could have a somewhat normal year after losing the spring 2020 season to the pandemic.
Cory still believes that decision was a mistake.
“It was going to be hard (to run multiple sports seasons in the spring),” he said. “I talked to (football) coaches at other schools and they said it was hard, but they were glad it happened. They were glad to have some season.”
Cory’s 2020 squad would have been among the best in the league, featuring such stars as Treppa Marcks, who is among a handful of Cardinals now playing for Santa Rosa Junior College (older brother Tj Marcks is also on the Bearcubs’ roster).
“We were going to have one of the best offensive lines we’ve had here and that’s where we’ve fallen short the last couple of years,” he said.
Of course, that 2020 season never happened and there’s nothing that can be done about it now. Cory, in his sixth season at Clear Lake, said he is looking ahead to what he has as opposed to what didn’t happen a year ago.
Young team
“I feel like I’m coaching a junior league team,” Cory said of the 2021 Cardinals. “I’ve got four sophomores and a bunch of juniors who have never played for me before. The sophomores didn’t play last year and the juniors have only one year of high school ball and not much junior football experience.”
Of the team’s seven seniors, only two — Ethan Maize and Maddox Albaum — have any significant varsity playing experience.
“They were good,” Cory said of Maize’s and Albaum’s rookie varsity campaign in 2019 when the pair saw playing time at tight end and linebacker.
Solid future
The Cardinals also have 20-something players at the junior varsity level and there is talent in the pipeline. Factor in a mostly young varsity squad and Clear Lake’s football future looks promising, according to Cory.
That leaves 2021 as the all-important bridge year between the way things used to be before COVID and the way things are now. Even with the resumption of play this season, COVID variants — such as the Delta variant — are filling up hospitals around the country. County teams are one outbreak away from having their season significantly altered or ruined in a heartbeat.
COVID effects
With only 21 players to open the season, Cory said that puts Clear Lake in a precarious situation. Normal attritition because of football injuries is one thing, but there’s no telling what COVID-19 could do to his team should one or more players test positive during the season. If they are quarantined 10-14 days and if teammates are forced to quarantine along with them, that could lead to forfeitures.
“If I were to get down to 14-15 to play a game, I’m not putting kids in that situation where they can’t leave the field during a game,” Cory said. “We might have to forfeit games.”
While that would be unfortunate, Cory said he won’t risk the health of his players for any reason.
“I’m hoping that doesn’t happen because we have the potential to be a good team,” he said. “I think we’re pretty athletic, we’ve shown that in 7-on-7 drills and at the camps we’ve gone to.”
Clear Lake has an abundance of skill players and a young line consisting of untested sophomores and juniors.
“In the line is where we’ve struggled in the past,” he said. “I’ve got young guys there but they’ll grow, get better. At times they’ve looked good, at other times not so much.”
How fast they develop will depend on the coaching staff, according to Cory.
“If we coach them right, they’ll get there and make it happen,” he added.
Dearth of QBs
The Cardinals currently have four quarterbacks in their system, three at the varsity level — seniors Jack Daskam and Maddox Albaum along with sophomore Jake Soderquist — and projected junior varsity starter Graden Greer, a sophomore.
“They each do something a little bit better than the other,” Cory said of his varsity QBs.
Albaum was the backup on the 2019 team.
“He’s one of those kids who shows up every day and works hard,” Cory said. “He knows the offense better than any one of them, and he’s a good leader.”
Daskam, standing 6-foot-2, has the strongest arm. His nickname is “The Red Rifle” because of his red hair.
“As strong an arm as any kid I’ve had here,” Cory said. “He has quickness and can run.”
Soderquist has no quarterback experience but is a standout athlete, according to Cory.
“All three guys are going to play somewhere,” Cory said.
Depth at quarterback is a “nice problem to have,” according to Cory. “I’ve never had it before here.”
In an offense that will use only one running back most of the time, the top candidates are Maize and sophomore Hank Ollenberger.
Maize has never played the position and this is only his second year of high school football, or one more than Ollenberger has.
“But both are really good football players,” Cory said.
Whoever starts behind center will have an assortment of targets running patterns down the field, senior Tyler Haskell and sophomore Cody Hayes among them.There’s also Soderquist, Ollenberger and Maize as well as Daskam, Albaum and senior Zane Robinson.
“He’s going to be a good football player,” Cory said of Hayes.
Line
Up front for the Cardinals will be the likes of Michael Freeze, Diego Brewster-Ramirez, Tony Gersalia and Axel Alvarez, all juniors. Gersalia is a converted running back who has looked good in practice so far, according to Cory, and Brewster-Ramirez is one the hardest workers on the team.
Won’t back down
“They’ll go out and battle people, they won’t back down, they’ll step up,” Cory said when asked to describe the character of his 2021 squad. “I think we can play with anybody on our schedule.”
Special teams
The Cardinals are putting an extra emphasis on special teams this season, believing it’s an area they can exploit opponents to full advantage.
“Two years ago we blocked three or four punts and we won all of the games we blocked punts in,” Cory said. “It’s really hard to return punts for touchdowns, but it’s not as hard to block them. A lot of teams don’t put in the time on special teams.”
Non-league schedule
The Cardinals’ three non-league opponents, in order, are Ferndale (Aug. 27 at home), Pierce (Sept. 3 in Arbuckle) and Winters (Sept. 17 in Lakeport). All of them played this past spring and all did well, according to Cory.
NCL I race
Given that the North Central League I took 2020 off, picking this year’s winner isn’t an easy thing to do.
Then again, maybe it is.
“If you’re going to compete in our league, it goes through Middletown,” Cory said of the defending league champions led by longtime Mustangs head coach Bill Foltmer, who is opening his 37th season at the school.
St. Helena, which returns the best running back in the league in senior Ivan Robledo (2,132 rushing yards and 33 TDs in 2019), is another solid pick.
Cory said Willits might be the surprise team based on what he’s heard and seen.
Where does that leave the Cardinals?
“If we put it together in the way I see it going together, there’s no reason we can’t compete with those other teams,” Cory said. “St. Helena and Middletown are going to show up and play. They are going to show up and you better be ready and you better be just as physical as they are.”
Staying patient
Cory has had to change up his usual practice regimen in the early going of 2021 because the veteran players he was accustomed to having in past seasons simply aren’t around this year.
“You spend more time explaining drills because there aren’t those kids to lead the drills,” he said of the increased learning curve.
Clear Lake’s newer faces are getting there, they’re just not quite there yet, according to Cory.
While a single down has yet to played this year, Cory said the success each team achieves in the upcoming season may have already been decided.
How is that?
According to Cory, teams with players who made the best use of their down time since the COVID-19 pandemic began in mid-March of 2020 are probably going to recover the quickest in 2021.
“Whoever manages COVID the best is going to come out on top,” Cory said.
