Tony caught up with the Rogers Eagles head coach Charlie Roten after their practice on Tuesday, August 6, 2019.
Tony: Third year here at Rogers. Improved the second year over the first year. Several starters back this year. What are your expectations for the fall?
Coach Roten: You said it right there – we’ve made some gradual improvements. This is my third year. Hopefully we can take that next step but we don’t really talk about that too much. We talk about improving as a team on a daily basis. We feel like if we can do that, we can be a pretty good football team.
Tony: Day two of practice and you are spending about an hour working on special teams.
Coach Roten: We talked to the kids about that yesterday. Special teams is a third of the game. We feel like we have to be just as good in that as we are offensively and defensively. I learned that from my time in Gunter. We put a great deal of emphasis on the kicking game there and tried to carry that over here and tried to get a bit of a leg up in the kicking game.
Tony: Who do expect to be some of your key offensive players this year?
Coach Roten: We’ve got quite a few guys coming back as you said. Of course, our quarterback Heath Schiller. He’s a three-year starter. We are expecting some good things from him. Joshua Minor and Jordan Riley. They both play slot receiver for us, kind of a running back type a little bit. Try to get them the ball different ways. They both are three-year starters. We expect quite a bit from them. Another guy is Thomas Goodwin. He’s a three-year starter as well. Those four guys are seniors and will make up the bulk of our offense. A guy on the outside that had a good year last year and we expect to have an even better year this year is Brady Sisneroz. He came on last year and did a good job. We need him to play really well this year.
Tony: And on the defensive side of the ball?
Coah Roten: 3A football so a lot of the same names but there are some guys up front that have been playing for a little while now that we expect to do some good things. Ty Sebeck. He’s been starting since he’s a freshman. He’ll be a junior this year. A two-year starter on year three. Starts on both sides of the ball. A guy we use at both end and tackle. He’s a good player down in there. The back bone of the defensive and offensive line is a guy named Evan Doskocil. He plays center for us and defensively he plays end and a little tackle as well. He’s the heart beat of this big boys up front. He gets ‘em going. We are expecting some good things from him.
