Team Preview:
Written By: Sven Alskog

Young talent received plenty of opportunities to make an impact for the Dietrich football team a season ago, with that group of Blue Devils making a trip to the playoffs and finishing second in the conference.

Kade Shaw, Lon Page and Shan VanTassell are the senior departures from that team, leaving even more chances to shine in the spotlight for an exciting remaining core.

“Four freshmen had a lot of playing time last year. With one year under their belt it will help us a lot,” said head coach Rick Astle.

Players like Brady Power, Andy Power, Audie Zimmers and Joe Jones are expected to be big impact performers on the offensive side of the ball. The team ran effectively a year ago, but hopes to see improvement in the passing game.

Replacing the explosive Shaw on offense represents perhaps the biggest challenge for the Blue Devils, as talent like that does not come around very often. Shaw also was First Team All-State selection out of the defensive backfield, contributing 72 tackles and ten interceptions.

On defense, Dietrich will be an aggressive unit based out of a 3-3 alignment. One of the focus areas for Astle on the defensive side of the ball is to perform better against the pass. That will be most important against upper echelon conference foes like Carey and Murtaugh who have the ability to move the ball through the air.

With Carey having graduated a load of talent and Murtaugh returning most everybody, the battle for the top tier of the conference could become plenty interesting. Dietrich hopes to get their journey started off on the right foot in its season opener at Hagerman.

As is the case ever year, don’t count Dietrich out, as the Blue Devils always seem to have enough talent on-hand to knock off anybody in the conference on any given week.