Knights Eager for 2010 Football Season

The Henryetta Knights are coming back with healthy, young and experienced players.

Thursday, July 28th 2011, 5:43 pm

By: News On 6

Originally Published: Aug 23, 2010 10:26 AM CDT

Wesley Coburn
Oklahoma Sports Student Mojo

HENRYETTA, Oklahoma -- 2007 was a great year for Henryetta football, as they went 13-1 and were two games away from the state title game. Since then, the times have been hard on the Knights, as they were 4-6 in 2008 and 1-9 last year. However, this is 2010, and the Henryetta High football team is raring to go and erase memories of last year’s painful ordeal.

Henryetta only lost three players to graduation -- Luke Allen, Jimmy Black and Ely Starkey -- so most Knights are returning with game experience, including the five freshmen who saw playing time last year. Eleventh year head coach Kenny Speer said that the biggest thing he learned from 2009 was to not start freshmen. So, unless the unexpected happens, that won’t be occurring this season. Another area of improvement is this year the Knights have some senior leadership, as 11 seniors come back, quarterback Cody McKinney, running back Kaylon Moore, and linebackers Grant Jensen and Tyler Brown included. Nine of those 11 seniors are starters, and altogether 18 starters are returning.

The offense has shown promise of improvement, after averaging 11 points per game last season. Henryetta should alternate the spread set with the I formation this year, and on defense should have four men up front, as well as five on the line, they’ll be looking to stop opposing offenses, which piled up 31.8 points per game on them last year.

Moving up to 3A-7 from 2A-5 will prove a tough challenge, but the Knights should be able to handle it. Coach Speer’s summary right now is, “We were real, real young last year, we’re still young, but we have some senior leadership this year, our kids have been playing hard (in practice), and we’ll just have to wait and see. Everything looks good so far.”

Henryetta has a scrimmage at home with Seminole August 26, and starts the season at Hartshorne September 3 at 7:30 p.m.