The football team jumped into their season and began practice weeks ago preparing for the new conference as well as blending in younger players.

Ben Wolfe, who is returning for his second year as head coach, said he feels confident about the upcoming season. “I’m excited for the players to reap the benefits of their hard work,” Wolfe said.

Senior Duncan McIntyre, a captain, shares Wolfe’s positivity about the team’s performance this season.

“The team that has shown up on Friday nights the past few years hasn’t been the one I’ve seen in practice and the weight room,” McIntyre said. “I think our team and fans deserve a winning season.”

This year, underclassmen make up a majority of the varsity lineup in order to replace the previous seniors.

“We have a really young team because we lost 18 seniors last year,” Wolfe said.

Sophomore Mykal Howard said he is ready to step up to the challenge of filling those spots.

“It’s going to be hard having such a young team but I feel like we have a lot of young talent that’s ready to step up and become leaders of this team,” Howard said.

McIntyre said he feels confident his teammates are ready for the season.

“The team we have this year may be the most talented I have personally played with,” McIntyre said. “They have the skills to make it all the way.”

This year Park enters a new sports conference with smaller schools, which McIntyre said he hopes will give them a leg up in games.

“The new conference will give us schools closer to our size in players which will help us in the wins category and realistically that will help us out,” McIntyre said.

Wolfe said the smaller conference will provide more opportunity for the success of the team. “We will be playing more schools like us which will give us a better chance to win,” he said.

Varsity’s first game of the season was on August 28 at Bloomington Jefferson High School. Their first home game will be the Homecoming game on September 12 at 7:00 p.m.