LRS looks to bounce back from uncharacteristic down year

When the calendar turned to November and the Lind-Ritzville/Sprague Broncos no longer had any football games, head coach Greg Whitmore looked inward.

Down time during the state playoffs was an unfamiliar feeling.

It wasn’t too long ago the Broncos repeated as state champions and amassed the longest active win streak in the state — 38 games.

However, youth coupled with injury led to a losing record in 2016 after a state quarterfinal appearance the previous season.

“The first thing you do is you evaluate everything about your program and it starts with me,” Whitmore said. “It starts with I evaluate myself as a head coach. There’s no blame to put around, but I’m going to start by looking what did I do? What was my energy level like? What was my coaching?

“I think you come back with a kind of renewed vigor to not have ... we’re not used to that. We’re not used to my first losing season and you don’t want that taste again, but every game is going to be a dogfight for us and we’ve got to go play by play in every single game.”

LRS recently was able to see some game situations in a jamboree recently and, for the most part, Whitmore was happy with what he saw.

“We’re working hard through some of this heat,” he said. “We’ve got very little depth. We had a jamboree and got some game speed stuff and that looked pretty good. Played a lot of freshman this year. This year a lot of those freshman are sophomores so that makes a huge difference. We struggled last year, as you know, not only with youth and inexperience but also injuries and we’ve got to avoid injuries.”

There’s a fair amount of talent across the Broncos’ roster.

Top running back Mason Brausen returns, aided by offensive lineman Tucker Guiles. Guiles certainly knows how to move bodies as the senior finished third in the heavyweight division at Mat Classic XXIX.

Bryce Esser will shift to a wide receiver, while Bryce Kelly — who saw a few starts at quarterback last season — returns as signal caller. Whitmore also hopes sophomore Austin Thompson can make an impact.

“I like the kids’ work ethic, I like our senior leadership right now, but we’ve just got to work our way into condition and keep getting better,” Whitmore said. “We’ve got a lot of kids at new spots and they’re still sophomores so we’ve got a lot of upside so we’ve got to keep working hard.”

LRS will need as many contributions as it can get in the loaded Northeast 2B league. The league posted three state playoff teams last season: Liberty, Northwest Christian and Asotin.

Liberty was the state runner-up and Asotin reached the semifinals; Asotin eliminated Northwest Christian in the quarterfinals.

“They lost quite a few (seniors), but with that being said, they all had juniors that got playing time and sophomores for those teams that are ready to step in,” Whitmore said. “We’ve been in that boat before where we’ve graduated a pretty large senior class and people think we’re going to be down and we make it to the semis. We’re obviously not in a position to take anyone lightly. We expect them (Asotin) to be a tough, tough road trip for us. It’s a tough way to state the season.”