Perhaps no team is coming into the 2010 football season out of the Henlopen Conference with higher expectations than Dover High School.
After graduating only four seniors from last year’s 4-6, 2-4 team, the Senators are returning almost every starter and many players with two years of varsity experience already on their résumés.
Dover showed flashes of being an electrifying team a season ago, but despite that it still fell short in finding the success it hoped for.
Instead of looking back negatively on that year, Head Coach Carlton Brown said it has refocused his players and raised expectations significantly for this year.
“They have that varsity experience and that is something you have to earn, not something people give you,” Brown said. “I think we learned some things last year about ourselves.”
At times in 2009, the Senators would get overwhelmed in games, become their own worst enemies in the mental department and end up on the wrong side of the score.
Senior offensive lineman Trip Thurman said those problems had less to do with the skill on the roster than it did in players needing to grow up.
“Last year we didn’t have much leadership,” Thurman said. “Our three captains were juniors. I think it was just a maturity level we needed to reach, and this year I think we’ve reached it.”
To produce the way many are expecting it to this year, Dover needs to take the one series at a time approach, Brown said, and gain a little swagger, though not too much.
“There’s a difference between having a swagger and being overconfident,” he said. “We want the guys to have that attitude, but understand that you play this game between the lines and you go 110%.”
While the high hopes for the Senators’ season are echoing through the community, Brown and his team are not acknowledging them and putting the focus merely on their preparation.
The coach doesn’t listen to hype or chatter around his group, adding that one could look at any team in the Henlopen Conference and declare them the “team to beat.”
“We’ve been in a position before with expectations and targets on the back and that stuff,” Brown said. “You can put a target on anybody’s back. We just have to come out and play football.”
One noticeable change for Dover this year, senior quarterback Kamal Abrams said, is the unity of the team.
