GREENFIELD — They’ve heard about the expectations regarding their team.
After a disappointing season in which they finished 3-7 and 2-5 in the Hoosier Heritage Conference and were eliminated in a blowout loss in the sectional opener, some outside of Greenfield don’t view the Greenfield-Central Cougars very favorably.
MaxPreps lists the team as one of the worst in Class 5A in its latest rankings. Another poll, which has circulated among the players and their coach, lists the Cougars at the very bottom.
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That’s OK with the Cougars and their coach. They look forward to far exceeding those expectations.
“No one really thinks much of us, and that’s fine,” Greenfield-Central coach Adam Sherman said. “That’s kind of how we like it. We were picked dead last in 5A — this is what I’ve been told, I don’t follow this stuff much, but someone brought it to me. We were picked to be dead last in 5A, to be 1-9.”
Senior offensive and defensive linemen Tate Helm, who quickly said “state title” in response to his goals for this year, also heard about the expectations.
With big goals in mind, he said he and his teammates are ready for a significantly better season than 2017.
“They have us down at 1-9,” Helm said. “Hopefully, we can do a lot better than that. We probably will do a lot better than that.”
Last year was a case of a team under-performing, Sherman said. With a strong senior class that set seven offensive passing records, sent two to the East-West game and have three players heading to play college football, he said a few bounces going a different way would have made for a very different season.
Greenfield-Central graduated 24 seniors from last year, leaving plenty of spots to fill. The Cougars lost their starting quarterback, running back and all their top wide receivers from the offense.
Despite that, it’s an exciting time for Sherman, set to begin his third season with the Cougars.
“The exciting part of this year is we’re extremely young, but this is fully our culture now,” Sherman said. “This is my third year here, so we’ve still got one class that was here with the old regime, but they’re bought in 100 percent to what we’re doing. You’re going to see a lot of young guys, a lot of new faces from last year, who are bought in to what we are doing.”
The most prominent of the younger athletes might be at the quarterback position, where freshman Gehrig Slunaker and sophomore J.P. Fuchs, last year’s backup, are in a fierce competition for the starting role to replace last year’s starter, Andrew Leslie.
Slunaker and Fuchs are two of the hardest working members of the team, according to their coach — two Sundays ago Sherman arrived for a staff meeting and found the two QBs throwing to one another on a day off — and they are “dead even” in terms of who could start. Whoever doesn’t win the starting job will get on the field elsewhere, he said, likely at wide receiver.
There are several running backs currently in the mix to see playing time to try to fill the shoes of now-graduated Braden Brown, and an influx of wide receivers are looking to see the field, too, including freshman Joey Roland.
The offense will be bolstered up front by Tate Helm (5-10, 230 pounds) and the rest of the offensive line, which has four returning starters and a lot of experience playing together.
“We’ve got more offensive linemen, a lot of returners from last year that started,” Helm said. “We all already have chemistry together, and we’ve got a couple new kids coming in that will probably help us a lot.”
As is the case with much of the team, the offensive line has several young players slated to start and make an impact, including sophomores Scott Stanley (5-9, 200 pounds), who Sherman called a stalwart, and Skylar Huffman (6-1, 210 pounds), who both started as freshmen.
After the Cougars had a very powerful rushing attack in 2016, they became a more balanced team last year, passing for about 150 yards per game while rushing for just shy of 100 yards per game. This year’s goal is to be balanced and strong enough to focus on either, based on how each game is going and how defenses are attacking them, Sherman said.
The defense has several big pieces back, including sophomore Turk Faitele, who was all-conference and all-county as a freshman, and senior Jaden Brown, another all-county player last year, who Sherman said he believes was the best defensive back in the conference in 2017.
“Jaden Brown, I’ll tell ya, he’s not very big, but I coached college football for a solid nine years and was decently successful,” Sherman said. “I’ll tell you, he’s as good of a football player as I’ve ever been around.”
Brown is one of 16 seniors on this year’s Cougars team, a low number compared to the past few seasons, with 24 last year and almost 30 the year prior.
He knows he’ll be counted on as a leader on the defense this season.
“Being a senior, all the hoopla that comes with it, the senior night, all the spotlight that’s put on you as a senior, much more is expected of you,” Brown said. “You can kind of feel the younger kids looking up at you. There’s much more leadership that is required of you, especially now that there’s so few of us out here.”
Sherman said that he likes where his defense is at. He’s got seniors Emmet Houser and Josh Helle back on the defensive line, along with Tate. Senior Grant Hinton is back at linebacker, with Bradon Nelson, a junior who played rotationally last year, also set to start at linebacker.
Senior Evan McLaughlin is back at cornerback, along with Brown. In the mix at safety is Gavin Rose, a junior who was slated to start last year as a defensive end before an injury.
He lost weight, hit the weight room hard and got stronger and more explosive, Sherman said, which switched his positions to receiver and safety.
While external expectations may be low, Sherman said it’s a fun time right now to be at Greenfield-Central. He expects a lot of underclassmen to play a role on this team this year, and he’s looking forward to seeing what his team can do on the field.
“We want to be better today than we were yesterday,” Sherman said. “The biggest thing for us, when it all comes down to it, we want to be the team that Greenfield is proud of.”
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Date;Opponent;Time
Aug. 17;Evansville Central;8 p.m.
Aug. 24;at Whiteland;7:30 p.m.
Aug. 31;at Mt. Vernon;7:30 p.m.
Sept. 7;Pendleton Heights;7:30 p.m.
Sept. 14; at Shelbyville;7:30 p.m.
Sept. 21;at New Palestine;7:30 p.m.
Sept. 28;Yorktown;7:30 p.m.
Oct. 5;at Delta;7:30 p.m.
Oct. 12;New Castle;7:30 p.m.
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Coach: Adam Sherman (third year)
Last season: 3-7, 2-5 HHC; lost 40-14 to Zionsville in Class 5A sectional opener
Key returnees: LT/DT Tate Helm, CB/RB/WR Jaden Brown, LB Grant Hinton, RB/FS Emmet Houser, RB/DL Josh Helle, seniors; LB Turk Faitele, G/NG Scott Stanley, T/DT Skylar Huffman, WR/OLB Chris O’Conner, sophomores
Top newcomers: WR/DE Noah Evanoff, senior; S/WR Gavin Rose, junior; QB/WR J.P. Fuchs, sophomore; QB/WR Gehrig Slunaker, DB/WR Joey Roland, freshmen
Outlook: Greenfield-Central has pieces in place to pick up several more wins from 2017’s record, but have the challenge of replacing every skill position player on offense from last year’s team. With the core of the offensive line and most of the defense back and an influx of young talent, the Cougars should see a nice bounce back season.
Notable: Greenfield-Central’s 14 passing TDs and 13 rushing TDs last season were all by now-graduated players. Only one offensive touchdown, a reception, was by a player still on the Cougars roster.
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