Monticello football set to open new season

by David Boyle
News Director
The Monticello High School football team starts their season on August 21 at 6 p.m. with a road trip to play Utah Military Academy-Camp Williams at Westlake High School. Watch the game live on StreamUtah.Live.
David Boyle recently talked with Buckaroo Head Coach Reed Anderson about the upcoming season. You can hear the full conversation as part of the pregame this Friday. A condensed version of the interview appears here.
DB: What did you see from your boys in this opening scrimmage.
RA: The biggest thing we saw were kids that have been working hard in the offseason in the weight room. It was very evident with their speed and their power and the movements of their body. Which ones had been in there and working their tails off and which ones hadn't. Those kids really shined today. It was kind of a testament that if you're in there and working hard that good things will come your way.
DB: Last season saw some success but was also the first time you didn’t make the 8-player title game, where do you fit in at the start of this new season.
RA: We got a little bit complacent as coaches and players and the program as a whole that hey, we probably could just deserve to be there. That was a good wakeup call to be like, you still have to put a lot of effort in to make it back there. There's a lot of kids that have put in a lot of mental training. Take Cache Young who had to start that semi-final game against Milford, and from that game to tonight, he is very much in command of the offense. As I stood out there reffing that game, I did not have to give him suggestions and he was very much in command of what protections he wanted. He'd align his running backs where he wanted them for protection calls. And that is something that shows me that he's mastered what we're trying to accomplish. When I can give him the reins and let him make those choices to what he sees to best fit what the team needs at the last moment. We've had quite a few players develop that mental capacity of studying and understanding what we're trying to do. That has been a focus this year is training us mentally to what's our task. We're not worrying about the outcome. We're worrying about the moment and the task at hand. What skills do I need to develop to accomplish my task and kind of let the score take care of itself? We've seen quite a few kids do that tonight.
DB: You mentioned Cache Young has improved his mental game, how’s he looking physically this year?
RA: He's kind of realized I can be a runner and he's got a lot of fast receivers out there, so leaving him by himself with the line means he can get away. He's much more nimble that way. So we can use our speed a lot more. We lost some of our bigger players last year, so this year's going to have to be a lot more use our speed, use our small size to get where we want to go. We have a lot of guys that can fit that role with Brandt Mack and Cash Mack and Miles Coleman, Jackson Breedlove. We've got quite a few kids that can fulfill that speed role. With all of them out there and that has helped. Cache can get away from guys in the back field and make throws. He does really good on the run. He likes to throw on the run. So our goal has also been for our receivers, You need to make good cuts and good routes. We saw some kids tonight make some really good stems on their routes and get wide open for some good, easy balls for the quarterback to make. So, that all has been very good to see.
DB: Yeah you’ve got a great receiving corps who else are you going to be having Cache throw to.
RA: Well, of course, Arturo. He's our utility guy. He can play running back, he can play receiver, he can play tight end, he can kind of go anywhere you need. You saw that tonight. We put him in a lot of different situations because of his speed and his size and his strength. He also has a very good command. He's like Cache where he knows all those positions so you can put him anywhere.
DB: Yeah Arturo will be carrying the ball for you but you’ve also got a good sized running back in Miles Coleman.
RA: Yeah, Miles is also a product of Arturo. Arturo needed a lifting buddy and would get Miles and Miles got hooked and it shows. He's also grasped the idea–It takes our running backs a few years to grasp how to run the offense–You saw that tonight where he would take that hand off, he would find that hole, put his foot in the ground and get North and South. He would not dance East and West. It usually takes a young running back a couple years but that turns one or two yard runs into seven or eight yard runs. With that understanding of how to do it and his strength from being in the weight room with Arturo and him just running fast. He's going to be a slippery one and hard to tackle.
DB: Yeah, it was fun to watch. Let's talk about the kids opening up those holes and giving Cache time to pass. Tell us about the line. I know you got one returning starter in Tristan Burtonshaw. What did you see from him tonight?
RA: Tristan did quite well. He had the responsibility of taking Noah Dilts on all night. And Noah is a big strong kid with a relentless motor and so you got to really have some good leverage on him and Tristan's a little taller. I mean, he's a big kid and hence we used him in a lot of our special packages last year for that reason. He did really well holding that and moving his feet and doing We're a well and we can shift down the line. I mean, Zamian Lopez, he wanted to learn to snap last year and he learned and he kind of got it down. We’re going to have to work on him as his first year full-time starter. But on the other side, you have Noah Dilts whose biggest struggle was knowing the plays but what we don't have to worry about is his effort and going after people and he's picking that up as a junior and that's been good.
DB: Let’s shift to the defensive side of the ball you’ve got a three-year starter coming back in John Leber at linebacker tell us how he’s looking.
RA: John is an interesting guy. He's one that sometimes you look at and you're like, I don't know what he's doing. And then he comes up with tackles and sacks in different places and you trust that he's going to do what he does. He did that quite a bit tonight. It was a focus of the other team that you're going to have to get to him and make sure that someone else has got to make a tackle and they did that quite a bit tonight to make sure they got to him. He's learning, and that leadership and experience is really good. We didn't allow blitzing tonight, but you'll start to see his blitzes have gotten a lot better. He's really good at timing with the nose guards and we'll start to see that especially when we’ve got someone like Canyon Christensen out there. He's a guy that we can place in a lot of different places. He returned starter on defense last year and he brings that wealth of experience that's going to be good for us on the edge with a year of varsity experience under his belt. So between those two guys and Tristan coming in at the end we should hopefully you know have a good solid core in each of the areas on D while everybody else kind of catches up for the first few weeks.
DB: What should fans know about this team.
RA: The work on the mental game of how you approach practice, a game, a task. We have really spent a lot of time this off season training our minds. Every game is a little bit physical, and it's a little bit mental. Most sports we spend majority of the time on the physical side of the game. We don't spend a lot of time on the mental side and we have really pushed for our mental side this year. It has amplified the physicalness of some of these kids that now they're able to show it in a positive way. We hope to continue doing that and to see results from it.