Athleticism, speed, size and youth are the four components that the 2012 Spoto Spartans will be built on says head coach Dale Caparaso. It’s been one of the most productive offseasons coach Cap has seen his Spartans put in, in what will be his fifth year leading the Riverview squad.
“Our kids are in the weight room religiously,” he says. “I just absolutely love this group of kids’ work ethic.”
The Spartans are coming off a 6-4 season where their Wing-T offense averaged over 220 yards per game on the ground, led by Eric Moate who rushed for more than 1,200 yards on only 110 carries.
“He did a pretty outstanding job,” says Caparaso. “In the first four games of the season he only averaged four carries a game. It was after that I sat down with my OC and indicated that I wanted Eric carrying the football 12-15 times per game. That’s when the big numbers came up. We feel that Eric is going to carry the ball 20-25 times per game.”
Moate may even see an increased work load early in the season.
“We’re going to need to get our kids some experience early on. The advantage I think we have in bringing on a fairly young football team is that, early on when they’re getting their experience, we’re just going to get the ball to Eric [Moate],” says Caparaso.”We’re going to give it to Eric [Moate] so much that it’s going to be boring until our younger guys get some experience then we’ll start spreading the ball around a little bit more.”
The offense will revolve around Moate, who Caparaso says will play all three RB spots in the Wing-T as well as some QB and WR, but there are number of key prospects that could burst onto the scene this year as well.
Traverrian Williams and Akilies Johns are expected to make big impacts defensively. Both played defensive end for the Spartans in 2011 and were playmakers, totaling 15.5 sacks.
“These kids are in the 210 [pound] range and can run,” Caparaso says. “We feel pretty comfortable with those two kids moving to linebacker.”
Also expected to make an impact is freshman James Betha who played junior varsity in 2011. He’ll play RB and DB for the Spartans and Caparaso says he could have played at the varsity level last year, but the Spartans wanted him to get the playing experience.
Visually, the biggest difference to the Spartans will be its offensive line. After consecutive seasons averaging around 205 pounds, Caparaso says the OL will average around 270 pounds.
“We’re gonna have two 300-pound offensive guards and a center that, right now, weighs 378. He’s a big dude and the strongest kid in our weight room,” coach Cap says.
The Spartans won’t do any experience this spring. Caparaso says the focus will be making it as similar to the regular season as possible.
“What we want to do is basically get our kids ready for the fall. The way we think we can best do that is doing exactly we’re going to do in the fall. We don’t want to experiment with anything crazy.”
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Kyle is a recruiting analyst for Big County Preps. You can email him at Bennett@bigcountypreps.com and follow him on Twitter @KyleBennettBCP.