Petersen: Who's back in the MAC
The excitement has begun.
High school football camps open across Iowa today, and formal practice starts in a week.
The Mississippi Athletic Conference is flush with returning names, including a whopping seven quarterbacks who saw significant action in at least one game in 2010. Four of those signal-callers were full-time starters.
With experience comes an elevated quality of play, a pleasing correlation for coaches and fans alike.
That doesn't necessarily equal parity, however, and without the benefit of preseason information sheets from coaches just yet, I'm hard-pressed to see the MAC playing out much differently than a year ago.
As a reminder, here are last year's final league and overall standings:
Bettendorf 9-0 12-1
North Scott 8-1 9-2
Assumption 7-2 7-3
Muscatine 5-4 6-5
PV 5-4 5-5
Central 4-5 4-6
Burlington 4-5 4-6
Clinton 2-7 2-7
West 1-8 1-8
North 0-9 0-9
Just for fun based on who's returning (or not returning), I've gone through team by team in a loose look at how the league will likely play out. Formal predictions will come closer to Week 1, which opens Thursday, Aug. 25 with Muscatine vs. Davenport North.
1. Bettendorf
With all manner of variables in the game of football in particular and high school sports in general, a possibility exists that the Bulldogs don't win their second-straight MAC crown. But it's slim.
Senior running backs Blake Younkin and Devon Spreen combined for 1,773 rushing yards and 20 touchdowns as juniors. Younkin averaged 144 yards a game (8 a carry) the final eight games of the season. Now add junior Malique Hudson, a late-season call-up last year and junior Nick Heimendinger, who split quarterback reps as a sophomore.
Bettendorf's lines are always dominant, and seniors DeAdrian King and Justin VanHoutan are back on the D-line. Behind them, last year's two leading tacklers - Nate Shaw and Keaton Jurevitz - return at linebacker.
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When Andrew Dobek went down at QB in Week 1 last year, junior Derek Fulton came in and shined. He completed five of eight passes - three for touchdowns - and totaled 122 passing yards. Now that was against Clinton, but it's still an encouraging sign.
First Team — Pitcher: Leroy Galindo, sr., Aransas Pass; Gabriel Alvarado, jr., Mathis; Chance Marshall, sr., Rockport-Fulton; Matt Scott, sr., Rockport-Fulton; Catcher: Derick Dominguez, sr., Mathis; First Base: Ryan Rangel, sr., Aransas Pass;
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Pitcher: Leroy Galindo, sr, Aransas Pass; Gabriel Alvarado, jr, Mathis; Chance Marshall, sr, Rockport-Fulton; Matt Scott, sr, Rockport-Fulton; Catcher: Derick Dominguez, sr, Mathis; First Base: Ryan Rangel, sr, Aransas Pass; Second Base: Austin Gibson,
“We weren't as good as we needed to be on third-and-1 (last season),” head coach Derek Dooley said. “I think we were about 70 percent on third-and-1 last year on offense and we really need to be 100. A lot of things go to that and that's kind of where
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