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Fort Scott, Dodge City picked for fifth-place tie
WICHITA, Kan. -- Butler Community College was the choice of coaches to win its sixth consecutive Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference football championship at a preseason media conference at the Best Western Airport Inn here Friday afternoon.
Fort Scott Community College, under first-year head coach Jeff Sims, was picked to finish in a tie for fifth place with Dodge City.
Coffeyville was picked to finish in second place. Garden City, with a rookie head coach, was tabbed for third while Hutchinson, with former FSCC head coach Rion Rhoades taking over there, was chosen fourth. Independence was selected for seventh place while Highland rounded out the poll in eighth.
In addition to Sims and Garden's Lucas Aslin, Highland will also have a new head coach as Mike Beagle takes over. In all, four schools changed coaches but all of them expect the parity that began to show in the Jayhawk Conference to continue this season.
"It's going to be an exciting season not only for us, but for the entire conference," Dodge City head coach Marcus Garstecki said. "It's amazing how close the teams have come. A few years ago, you saw 55-0 and 47-7 scores. You don't see those type of games anymore."
Sims took over at FSCC in December. He has previous head coaching experience in Minnesota but is ready to move into one of the best conferences in the nation.
"I've been wanting to be a head football coach in the Jayhawk Conference since I went to Baker University," Sims told the assembled media. "As a player, all I heard was exciting things about the Jayhawk. I've been fortunate to coach in the Mission Conference in California and in the Minnesota Conference against (current Independence coach David) Ward, who did a tremendous job there.
"It's been important for me to become a part of the Jayhawk Conference. There are great coaches in this league."
The Greyhounds had their first winning season since 1992 when they went 7-5 last season under Rhoades, winning seven of their last 10 after closing out a 24-game losing streak. Expectations are now high at FSCC and Sims is ready to step in.
"It's really fun to be at Fort Scott -- to be at a college that really wants to have a quality football program and compete for national titles," Sims said. "And that's our goal. We don't believe that we're going to try to do anything unless we're going to be the best at it. There's a long way to go to do that but we get up every day and we work towards that. We're very proud of our institution and we're working very hard to do that."
The foundation for the Greyhounds' success this season will be in a strong sophomore class that set the bar with its performance last season. Among the returning players Sims spoke about was quarterback Greg Cross, who threw for 1,311 yards and nine touchdowns last season.
"I couldn't ask for a better young man to lead our football program," Sims said. "I saw him as happy as he's ever been yesterday because he got an A in biology because he's worked his butt off all summer long so he can graduate in December. I'm hoping he has a great year, so he can have an opportunity to lead a Division I football program."
Also high on Sims' list are offensive lineman Jared Koechner, receiver Anthony Riley, linebacker Matt Glades and defensive backs Todd Adkins and Lucien Antoine.
"We have an outstanding class of young men coming back," Sims said. "I'm very fortunate to follow coach Rhoades at Fort Scott. He worked his butt off. He turned a program that was really down into a quality football program. I'm hoping that we can continue on that road. There are some great young men at our school.
"There have been some transfers from our school out because I'm not Coach Rhoades. We all have different philosophies. We work our programs very differently. But the young men who have stayed are very committed to Fort Scott Community College and are tremendous young men."
Butler, which also won the NJCAA Region VI Playoffs and the Dalton Defenders Bowl on its way to finishing 11-1, has only one returning starter: Defensive back Maurice Gray, who had six interceptions. But Grizzlies head coach Troy Morrill has faced similar situations a couple of times before and has still managed to come out on top.
Press Taylor is contending for the Grizzlies' starting quarterback job. He is the younger brother of former Butler and University of Nebraska signal caller Zac Taylor.
Coffeyville, 7-4 in 2006, also doesn't have many returning starters. But one of them is running back Nate Gullory, who rushed for over 1,000 yards and 13 TD's last year.
Aslin was the defensive coordinator the past two seasons for Garden City, 6-4. He also has to replace 10 starters on defense and seven on offense. The Broncbusters need to replace over 3,000 yards of offense between the graduations of QB Sean Setzer and RB Jeff Blanchard.
Hutchinson was winless for the first time in school history last season, which is what led them to hire former Blue Dragon linebacker Rhoades. However, Hutch returns just about as many starters as most of the other schools aside from Fort Scott. QB Chris Todd, a transfer from Texas Tech, looks to become the Dragons' leader.
Dodge City, 4-5, lost three of the conference's top eight receivers and also has questions at quarterback. Garstecki, who led the Conquistadors to the Region VI Championship Game two years ago, feels his strength will be on the offensive line, where honorable-mention all-conference center Kyle Bright returns and HM all-conference defensive lineman Kyle Burkhart will make the switch to offensive tackle.
Ward has nine starters back at Independence, 3-6, and had his largest recruiting class in his four years there as 47 player signed with the Pirates in the winter. However, the Pirates will have to start a freshman at quarterback with former Parsons signal caller Jeff Schibi one of the candidates.
Beagle comes to Highland, 3-6, after five years at the North Dakota School of Science. He has also had head coaching experience at a juco in Mississippi. He has been working on boosting numbers at Highland, particularly the number of in-state players.
The Jayhawk Conference season begins August 25 with a slate of eight non-conference games.
NOTES -- Sims said the first day of fall football practice will be August 7. The first five days will be restricted to once a day. After that, two-a-days will be held every other day and one practice the rest of the time. This is in line with NCAA rules that were enacted last season. Only about 24 practices are allowed before the season opens....
This was the first time in many years that this conference wasn't held on the same day in the same city as that year's Shrine Bowl. The media session was moved to Wichita because of its central location, although it also serves to make it the focus of the media on that day instead of splitting its attention between it and the Shrine Bowl. Since the conference was held on a Friday, however, many assistant coaches that would have normally attended stayed home to attend to team business....
Among the rules changes for 2007 are the return to the timing rules of 2005. Last season, the clock would start whenever the ball was marked ready for play, regardless of the reason the clock stopped. Craig Hesler, KJCCC Supervisor of Football Officials, said it was estimated that teams lost 15 plays a game under least year's rules. Also, the clock will not start on kickoffs until the player returning the ball has touched the ball in the field of play. It had been starting when the ball was kicked.
Another change moves the spot for kickoffs back to the 30-yard line, as it is in the NFL, to encourage more returns. Accordingly, the rule for playing the ball after it's been kicked out of bounds has been adjusted to that one of the options remains to play the ball from a team's own 35-yard line. Without that adjustment, that would have changed to the 40-yard line....
KJCCC Commissioner Bryce Roderick said it wasn't easy to find a replacement opponent for Highland in the Kansas-vs.-Texas opening-week series after Ranger dropped football at the end of last season. The conference looked into replacing Ranger with either Arkansas Baptist, which just started a football program, or an Iowa school but those fell through. Georgia Military stepped forward to replace Ranger as Roderick said it was "eager to play against a Jayhawk Conference school"....
Roderick also announced that it's highly likely that the Kansas-Texas challenge will continue as school presidents in both conferences have been pleased with the results. It also remains likely that Air Force Prep will continue to remain on every school's schedule in the future....
The Dalton Defenders Bowl may have to be canceled this season as there may not be enough hotel rooms in Coffeyville due to damage from the flood of the last weekend of June....