Written by: Will Hoenike
Veteran eight-man football coach Dana Strong is headed into year two as the head coach at Hagerman High School and he is excited to see positive strides after a tough season for the Pirates in 2020.
“We need to stay healthy, first and foremost,” Strong said. “We had only one game last season where our starting backfield played together and it happened to be the one game we won.”
Coming into this season, Strong and his staff will have to mold replacements for leading rusher Codey McCrory and two-way line standout Jesse Titone. Both players earned postseason recognition from the 1A Division 2 Sawtooth Conference.
Strong does have options at his disposal. Speedy junior Cole Rowley and sophomore Wyatt Hoskovec are among the player who will compete for expanded roles in the Pirate backfield alongside junior quarterback Cameron Zeltner. Senior Chance Freeman returns as the team’s center and senior Brandon Zeltner should be a key target when Hagerman throws the football.
“The play of our offensive line and our quarterback are keys for us this year,” Strong noted. “If they have the year they are capable of, we will be a competitive team to play. We are young and how fast the youth grow up will be key.”
That youth, a strong freshman class that had an undefeated middle-school season in 2020, figures to be the foundation going forward. But there are still nice pieces there that should provide exciting moments for Hagerman fans this fall.
“This group is hungry and has been hitting the weight room hard,” Strong said. “They show up for workouts and are enthusiastic about the upcoming season. We will have a young team and it will be exciting to watch them grow and develop over the next few seasons. The future is bright if we continue to work hard and get faster and more athletic.”
Strong also singled out junior Kody Wareham and sophomore Alex Asher in the middle of the defensive front.
“We will feature various fronts and hope to generate more pressure on the quarterback and force the running backs to go where we want them to go,” Strong said. If Wareham and Asher are effective up front, Pirate linebackers like Brandon Zeltner, Freeman, Rowley, and Hoskovec should have big seasons racking up tackles near the line of scrimmage.
Hagerman has a strong history on the football field, winning state titles at the 1A Division 1 level as recently as 2011 and 2013. And Randy Clark led the program to back-to-back state championships in 1989 and 1990 when Idaho had an 11-man division at the 1A (then A-4) level. There’s work to be done to get the Pirates back to that level but Strong is confident that the pieces of the puzzle are in place and, starting this season, the door opens for more wins in the future along the Snake River in southwestern Idaho.