DeKalb looks to start strong after rough season
By Calvin Silvers
The DeKalb Tigers are coming off a 1-10 season last year, with that single win in the Class 1 state district quarterfinals against Stewartsville with Osborn.
One of those 10 losses did come at the hands of St. Joseph Christian, when the Lions faced the Tigers in week 1 of last season, with SJSC winning 54-12. The Lions tallied six more wins in 2023 compared to 2022, catching most of the 8-man football teams off guard, especially early in the season.
“I think they fire off the ball well,” DeKalb head coach Kaleb Wardlow said of St. Joseph Christian. “You know, I think they do a lot of things well and with the experience coming back and them wanting to be physical, you know, they’re they’re going to be tough.”
Last season threw some adversity at the Tigers, as they lost their starting quarterback Devin Hall for a few contests. That injury allowed for now-starting QB Luke Miller to get some experience before handling an entire season as the main man.
“Timing’s a little bit different,” Wardlow said. “You know, Devin did stuff at a different speed. Luke does stuff at different speed. So it’s just fine-tuning and a little bit different. But it does make it easier that we don’t have to teach every little thing.”
Low roster numbers last season forced DeKalb’s head coach to step in on the scout team. Now this year, the numbers are back up, making practices more intense.
“A lot of the skill guys is fine-tuning, but also at the same time, we have to, you know, coach up the freshmen, which we didn’t have any freshmen last year,” Wardlow said. “So it’s good we can actually go eight-on-eight for once.”
And speaking on the skill positions, the Tigers believe that’s where they’ll be most experienced to attack teams. Not only does the team bring back most of its offensive skill players, but there’s experience on the back end as well.
“We had a couple of linemen that were very inexperienced and now they have a year under their belt,” Miller said. “So hopefully things will slow down for them. And even like our skill positions, we have some older guys coming up now.”
This year, the team will be more prepared for what the Lions can, and could be, with the coach laying out two things his team needs to do for a win.
“We have to get the ball on our skill players’ hands, let them run,” Wardlow said. “Hopefully, you know, we break a tackle and score some points. We got to stop the run and we’re not very big. So, you know, scheme-wise, we have to just make sure where our kids are in the right spots and we have to, they have to, make tackles.”
