The 2017 high school football season starts this Friday. To get ready, we sent Ethan Koch around the city to interview coaches and catch practice. For day 2, Ethan breaks down the Highland Park Scots.
Entering his third year at Highland Park, head coach Faron Kraft understands the difficulties involved in building this team.
It starts by getting the players to believe in themselves and buy into the program, something Kraft admits is challenging.
“That’s something we’ve talked about a lot,” Kraft said. “Once we talk about it and we give the statistics to it and small victories we’ve got, I think they see it, but they still want to win ball games.”
Overcoming transfers and low player participation, Highland Park looks to break a 25-game losing streak and set the foundation for the future.
Highland Park loses some key players to transfer, including Larry White, Davonshai Harden, and Jacqez Barksdale. All three will wear Topeka High uniforms this fall.
Despite the transfers, Kraft trusts his skill position players to have what it takes to compete in the Centennial League.
“I think once again we’ve got some really good skill guys. Those number ones, they’re pretty good. I’d take those guys amongst anybody we play. They’re good kids, they’re good workers.”
Seniors Will White, Tyree Florence-Patton, and Angelo Plakio will lead this team offensively. White caught 16 passes for 305 yards and three touchdowns last season. Kraft said schools in the MIAA conference have talked to White about playing football next year.
Plakio earned All-Centennial League honorable mention a year ago. A physical linebacker on defense, coach wants to play Plakio both ways this season, replacing Barksdale at running back.
“Angelo’s going to have to take over the load for the last two good running backs we’ve had,” Kraft said.
Florence-Patton split time at quarterback last year with Harden, but will transition to receiver this year. With Florence-Patton’s position change, the keys to the offense go to sophomore Jai’Shaun Spicer. Spicer has not played football, but has demonstrated his athleticism on the basketball court. Coach Kraft talked the lefty into coming out for the team during the spring, and Spicer has committed himself to learning the position.
“He’s been working his tail off all summer trying to play quarterback and learning the system, and he’s doing a good job. [He’s] still got a lot to learn, ways to go, but he’s getting there.”
Defensively, coach said the team is still looking for guys to fill in the secondary, but pointed out Plakio, Maliki Stepp, and Devaun Elrod to contribute in the front seven.
To start fall practice, the Scots barely had over 30 players attend practice. Kraft estimates the team reaching 50 once they play their first game. However, he was optimistic of future of the team, as he said the team fields 25 freshmen.
“We’ve got a group of freshmen, finally, we’ve got some football players in there,” the western Kansas native said. “We got some kids that are loyal to Highland Park and want to be here and want to work hard. That’s gonna help us out a lot as the season goes on.”
Kraft said some may see some playing time as freshmen, but not for a while.
“Right away, I don’t know how many are going to be ready to get any varsity time. We just don’t know yet. …But there’s some good-looking kids that are going to be some good ball players eventually for us.”
The schedule provides no favors for the Scots. Highland Park opens the year on the road against Washburn Rural. They then play Seaman at home and Manhattan on the road. Those three opponents went a combined 24-8 last year. They will face all four 6A opponents in the Centennial League.
“Our schedule year-in and year-out is a nightmare, and none of our 6A schools are slouches.”
Having a brutal schedule makes it difficult for Highland Park to rack up wins for the new playoff system. The new system, which divides the state into two regions, seeds teams based solely off wins and losses, regardless of schedule.
“It’s not a bad system,” Kraft said when asked about his impressions of the new playoff format. “I like the overall idea of it. I just think we need to tweak some things with strength of schedule. …There’s some teams that win two or three ball games, if they got to schedule some other teams they’d be six, seven, eight-win teams.”
Despite scoring 7.3 points per game last year, Kraft said his team is improving, and that they are slowly closing the gap on 5A schools. That showed last year when Highland Park took Kansas City Schlagle, the number one seed in the east region, down to the wire in the playoffs, falling 24-16.
“That first year we struggle against about half our schedule and we just weren’t competitive at all in some of those games. Now, against the really big schools, we get out manned by the end of the game, but against the schools our size we do a pretty good job of competing.”
Kraft knows it takes time and patience to build this program, but if his players commit to the process, the results will follow. The Scots head coach believes he saw the players he had buy in last summer in the weight room, and he thinks this team can continue to develop.
“I think we have a little bit more buy-in than what we had in the beginning [of my time here]. We’re still struggling with some things, but our freshman classes keep getting a little bit bigger each year.”
All stats come from the Topeka Capital-Journal
