Prep football: Plainfield North seeks another special season, despite challenges

PLAINFIELD – With only four starters returning from its 2016 Class 7A state runner-up football team, including just one on offense, Plainfield North appears to have its work cut out for them if they want to make another deep postseason run.

When the one player you have back on offense is a proven quarterback who threw for 1,998 yards and 21 touchdowns, they have something to build upon.

With senior quarterback Brady Miller back to lead a team that went 11-3 last season, along with senior defensive backs Dillon McCarthy and Zach Nadle, and senior defensive end Shane McGrail, coach Tim Kane’s Tigers are excited about the upcoming season.

The combination of winning the program’s first playoff games and having a 14-week season has inspired the players, especially those who are battling for a starting role.

“We obviously lost some really good players on both sides of the ball, including some great leaders and playmakers,” Kane said. “But we have a good program and good kids coming up, and now is their turn to step up. Whenever you have the opportunity to play all of those extra weeks, that’s a lot of extra practice for kids, so that will be beneficial for us. We tell the seniors that this is their team and ask them what type of legacy that they want to leave.

“There’s a lot of jobs that are open and a lot of time for them to show what they can do. We certainly feel like we’ve got some pretty good players who can build on what they did last year. This is kind of a quiet, business-like group that just show up each day to work. The thing that helped us a lot last year and so far this year is that our kids are students of the game who understand the big picture. We have some great senior leaders like Brady, Zach, Dillon and Shane, and it will be exciting to see what some of the new starters can do.”

With Miller being the lone offensive returner, he realizes there will be additional pressure on him to lead, but he feels confident with the players who will be joining him on that side of the ball.

“I’m excited about this year since we have some really fast guys,” Miller said. “We had a lot of seniors, but we feel like our juniors are doing a great job this summer. The juniors learned from last year’s seniors, who were a good group of guys. We know that we have some time before week one so we’re starting to work everything out and it’s looking pretty good. We got to the state championship last year so the ultimate goal is to get back there again. The whole town rallied behind us last year, and I know they’ll be excited to see us on the field this year.”

Beside Miller, others to watch on offense include senior receivers Colin Creghin and Jaylen Watkins, lineman Kobe Povlick and senior running back Joe Stiffend, a 2016 track and field all-stater, who was unable to play last season due to an ACL injury.

“Last summer everything was going great for me and then I got hurt but you can’t go back in time, you’ve just got to move on,” Stiffend said. “So I’m using that from last year and carrying it into this year to do the best that I can do. Even though I didn’t get to play, it was all about doing whatever I could for the team. What I like about this group is that we’re learning and take something the coaches say and go out and do it. We’re fast and strong so we feel like we can do anything that we put our minds to. We want to get back to where we were.”

In addition to McGrail, McCarthy and Nadle, others on defense include senior linebacker Nicholas Wood, junior linebacker Nate Curtis and junior defensive end Alex Nowak.

“A lot of our guys worked with last year’s starters and we got a lot more practice time than other teams, so that will really benefit us,” Nadle said. “A lot of the juniors are really excited for this year since they want to show what they do since they were pretty good as freshmen and sophomores and they want the program to keep growing. We don’t have a lot of guys coming back but we trust a lot of our new teammates. We just have to have good camaraderie in order to trust each other and also have everyone do their jobs.”

While the Tigers realize that it will be difficult to duplicate last season, they’re excited about the new starters and hope that the playoff-run momentum will carry over.

“Everyone’s really excited, but we’re just trying the season one game at a time in order to have the same goal as last year,” McGrail said. “The younger guys who are stepping up this year had a lot of practice with the long run that we had and that really prepared them for this season. Everyone who was on last year’s team knows how it feels to win playoff games so we want to keep that going. We need Brady to be as successful as he was last year. What I like about this team is that we’re hard-working and we know what it takes to win.”