Head Coach Bill Fisher and company are looking forward to their chance to take the championship this year.
Seneca High School football coach Bill Fisher is excited about the upcoming season. He talked at length about the preparation for the fall season last week, as the program held its 14th annual Golden Eagles Football Camp, where children from 5 to 18 years old come together to learn all parts of football, from the fundamentals to safety to teamwork.
“I’m excited,” Fisher said. “We have a good group coming back.”
However, there are a few missing pieces on the team that need to be filled because of graduating seniors. Three-year starting quarterback JJ Scarpello, offensive/defensive tackle Garrett Blesi and running back/linebacker Jurelle Watson are the three key seniors who graduated in June.
“We have a couple key positions we have to replace, but we have a group that’s working hard,” Fisher said. “Filling in your quarterback — especially a three-year starter — that’s key. So I think that who we have coming into that place will do a good job, and like every team, you’re hoping they just gel. That’s what’s great about this camp. We’ve got young kids, old kids. It all just gels together, it brings them closer together, and I think when you have teams that do gel like that, you always play better.”
In fact, Scarpello and Blesi were at the camp helping train the players. Youth, teens and high school players all work in a group side by side during the week-long camp.
“I want them to get to the playoffs for sure,” Blesi said about his expectations for the team this year. “That’s usually my №1 goal every season, and I want to see what they can do from there.”
“You see them start to bond with everybody, too,” Scarpello said. “Because we start to play some games in the middle of the day or the end of the day when everybody’s tired and they really bond.”
What kind of drills are the players doing at camp?
“We started off with just footwork, the base stuff to get it down,” Blesi said. “We’re working from the bottom up — how to control the bottom half of your body and work your way up the power and really just pushing off and getting the basics down.”
In the morning, “each side will warm up together and stretch together, and then we go on offense together,” Scarpello said. “We’ll do defense in the afternoon.”
However, Scarpello stresses the camp is also about “some fun drills and letting them have fun.”
Scarpello wants the team to build on its previous two years of success. In both years, the team made the playoffs and lost to Delsea. Last year, Seneca lost in the first round, and the previous year the team lost in the semi-final.
Scarpello credits the recent success to offensive changes — mainly the switch from a “winged T” running-based offense to a “spread offense,” which emphasizes passing the ball over running.
“We have a lot of speed and a lot of fast guys in our school,” he said. “We just started throwing the ball a lot more and it’s really helped us out.”
Scarpello’s younger brother Tom is expected to be an impact player for Seneca this year.
“I think I see a lot of talent here,” said the younger Scarpello, who plays wide receiver and defensive end. “A lot of guys are getting more into football, starting younger, working out with trainers and stuff, so I think a lot of guys are stronger.”
Whoever wins this year’s starting quarterback job will have to fill Tom’s older brother JJ’s shoes.
“A lot of people overlooked how much of a leader [he was] and his presence out there,” he said of his older brother. “That’s a lot of things we’re going to miss this year, but I think it gives the opportunity for somebody new to step up.”
You could say the team has a bit of a chip on its shoulder after exiting in the first round of the playoffs last year.
“You want to get in there and you want to go the whole way, and last year we didn’t do that. So we want to get back and we want to win the whole thing,” said Kevin Gsell, who’s also expected to be a standout player for Seneca at wide receiver and free safety.
“I think every year you go into the season wanting to win the whole thing,” said Gsell, a two-sport athlete who’s also an exceptional shortstop and third baseman on Seneca’s baseball team. “You want to win all your games, but I think there’s a real possibility for us this year, and we’re just trying to work hard to get to that.”
