Seymour hoping to find offensive spark
The Seymour football team brings back some familiar faces in its backfield this year.
Senior Jamison Sassman returns after leading the Thunder with 1,039 rushing yards last season, while senior Devin VerVoort is entering his third year as the starting quarterback.
The experience should help ignite Seymour after it experienced its share of offensive woes in being shut out twice and losing three games by a combined seven points last year.
“I know Devin, as a quarterback, took it personally that last year we struggled offensively,” Seymour coach Matt Molle said. “He took that burden personally. I understand what that is like because I played quarterback a long time ago in high school, so I understand when you feel that way. But it wasn’t his fault. It was a combination of things.”
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Molle feels the combination of experience and speed his team possesses will help the offense turn the corner as his team attempts to make the WIAA playoffs for a 10th straight year.
“I think we have a little better team speed this year, which is going to be a key,” said Molle said, who is entering his 13th season as head coach at Seymour.
“You always try and tweak things depending on who your personnel is. We spent the last few years being pretty vanilla on offense because we were pretty good defensively. We weren’t as explosive weapons wise as we would have liked to been.”
In addition to being a faster group, Seymour will benefit from having seniors Mason Hebb, Adam Smith and Casey Yaeger return on the offensive line.
While the offense is looking to get back up to speed, the Thunder will try to maintain its dominance on defense after allowing only 14.4 points per game last season.
It will be a tall task since the defense has to replace five players that earned first-team all-Bay Conference honors.
The unit does return senior John Rydzewski, a second-team all-conference linebacker, along with senior Josh Krause, who received honorable mention all-conference recognition as a defensive back.
Junior linebacker Tyler VandeHei and senior lineman Ethan Taubel also have experience from last year’s team, which limited Bay Conference champion Menasha to 14 points and sustained an overtime loss to North Eastern Conference champion Luxemburg-Casco.
“We struggled to finish the deal,” Molle said. “It was frustrating for our guys and everybody because we were right there in a lot of those games, so that’s definitely a focus this year.”