The 4A Chapman Fighting Irish football team is heading in to this season as a young and “run heavy” team.

Dan Sell, Head Coach of the Fighting Irish, said that running the ball a lot won’t be a change from last season, but it may be more frequent.

“We’ll probably be fairly ‘run heavy’…trying to solve offensive line questions…defensively I think we’ll be in pretty good shape…we’ve got a pretty good group of returning linebackers and secondary…we have a lot more guys returning on defense so we should be better there,” said Sell.

Although the lineman are young – and scarce – Sell is banking on the returning skill position players like running backs and receivers to step up this season as leaders on and off the field.

“We’ve got several guys that we just have to find the right spots to put them in,” said Sell.

Sell said that he likes to use the ‘zone blocking’ scheme but with a team that doesn’t necessarily have sizable lineman it can be difficult.

“We’ve got the right pieces and parts, we just have to find a way to put them all together…we’ve got more kids this year that can carry the ball in different ways,” said Sell.

One luxury the team can appreciate is the versatility in the young players.

Cliche’ as it may seem Sell said that his goal for his team is to just get better each week and continue to improve.

“We’re really going to focus on that early – just trying to get better, and clean up things and take care of things…self -inflicted type things we have to make sure we take care of – so, just those kinds of things early in the season and then maybe figure out where people fit best a little bit, and solve some of those puzzles and find out what our best mix is on offense and defense,” said Sell.

With a young team one thing Head Coach Dan Sell can look forward to is their development and evolution together over the next few seasons.

The Chapman Irish host their Green/White Scrimmage game this Friday.