By CRAIG ADKINS
NOBLESVILLE – The Noblesville Millers’ anticipation of getting to play on their new football field just had to be all they could think about during the first couple of weeks of school and practices.
The Millers have a brand-new football facility that’s located directly on the west side of the high school campus. They had previously played at Beaver Materials Field since 1969, which is adjacent to Ivy Tech Community College, which was the original high school.
Third-year head coach Dave Sharpe has his team primed to change the tone of last season’s 2-8 campaign that started out well with two wins, but ended with eight consecutive losses.
In Friday night’s scrimmage, the Millers defense took to the field to face the Panthers offense. There are a lot of returnees to lead the defense, but also some new faces seeing more playing time than they did a year ago.
“We feel we have a lot of experience returning in the linebacker core. We tweaked our scheme a little bit to get our personnel in the game. Guys like Jordan Sharp, Trey Speek, Austin Hastings, Mac Lynas, Gavin Kinyon, all those guys have a ton of varsity experience, so we’re going to play more of a five linebacker-type of set this year,” said Noblesville head coach Dave Sharpe on his defense and how excited he and his staff are about the experience that returns.
The first defensive series seemed a little rusty, but let’s be honest, a scrimmage is a great tool to see who and what are going to work well against different offensive styles. The first three plays were all first downs by speedy playmakers from North Central, but that’s no surprise with their usually quick offensive skilled players.
Coach Sharpe is also high on his defensive unit as a whole. There will be many that will see time on defense this year to keep fresh bodies out there, especially because we all know that late the August and September heat will come back and play a big role.
“We’re rotating in a ton of bodies at defensive line, especially here in August and September, so we know it’s going to be a war of attrition in these hot, humid games,” Sharpe said of how the anticipated heat and humidity will play a factor in the upcoming weeks.
“And, the same thing with our secondary. We honestly feel like we have five or six DB’s that can play on Fridays,” stated Sharpe confident in his corners and safeties.
“We’re still trying to figure out who’s going to get the bulk of the snaps, so it was great defensively, from an audition standpoint. We’ll have thorough evaluations and we’ll feel pretty confident about the very difficult decisions we need to make coming into next week,” continued Sharpe about his defense.
Noblesville’s offense brings back junior running back Logan Shoffner, who rushed 148 times for 1,270 yards and nine touchdowns, while averaging 8.6 yards per carry.
“Shoff’s our guy and we’re going to get him the ball as much as we possibly can in creative ways. He’s just a tremendous high school football player,” said Sharpe on his speedy junior tailback.
The Millers offense will be guided by freshman Landon Hughes and sophomore Max Miller, more than likely both seeing ample time leading the offense at the quarterback position.
“The quarterback situation, yeah we’re about 50/50 with Max and Landon right now,” said Sharpe on the possibility of platooning his young quarterbacks.
“It might be a rotate type of thing until we figure out who’s going to get more of the reps on Friday nights,” continued Sharpe on his two signal callers.
Sharpe and the Millers have their regular season opener at home when they host the defending Class 4A state champion Mount Vernon Marauders at 7 p.m. next Friday, Aug. 19 at Beaver Stadium.