By KELLY FENTON
Leader sports editor
Both regular season success and postseason disappointment are paying dividends for Beebe as spring football got under way last week.
The Badgers, under first-year head coach John Shannon, won their first six games last year on their way to an 8-3 record.
That translated into 58 players turning out this spring — 10 more than came out last year.
“There’s no question that our success got the interest up,” said Shannon, who radically altered the Beebephilosophy from pass-happy Spread to Wing-T grind last season.
The season ended with a 49-26 loss to eventual state champion Greenwood in a game that was much more lopsided than that final tally suggests. But that, too, provided motivation, Shannon insists, pointing to an offseason re-dedication among his team to strength and speed.
“We had a really good offseason,” Shannon said. “We are a lot stronger and faster than we were at this time last year. The loss to Greenwood showed us just how far we’ve got to go to get to that level. You pick out the elite programs in the state and you want to be like them.
“That transferred over. The kids worked extremely hard in the weight room to close the gap in strength and speed.”
Shannon was quick to point out that the Badgers would probably never be as fast as a team like Blytheville. But the improvement has been dramatic, nonetheless. Only four Badgers ran a sub-5-second 40-yard dash last year. This spring, 22 have achieved that feat.
Shannon is hoping that extra speed and strength — as well as a year of familiarity with his new offensive and defensive schemes – will help Beebe overcome the loss of 12 starters. The big graduations were quarterback Charlie Spakes, halfback/receiver/defensive back Josh Turner, halfback Chris Blundell, running back/linebacker Kyle Williams and offensive lineman Cody Cameron.
While those five will be hard to replace, Shannon chooses to focus on who’s coming back. It begins with four top-notch offensive linemen in first-team All-Conference selections Ross Stroud and Jacob Sullivan; second-team All-Conference player Tyler Wallen; and Justin Wooten, who returns from an ACL injury suffered late last season.
“One of our strengths we think will be our offensive line, with Sammy behind them,” Shannon said.
That would be Sammy Williams, the junior fullback who bulled his way for 1,172 yards and 15 touchdowns in 2007. Williams will be called on to be the workhorse again this season. He toted the ball nearly 250 times, or about 23 carries a game.
Taking over the quarterback position from Spakes is Roger Glaude, a player Shannon said possesses a great understanding of the Wing-T offense.
“He was Charlie’s backup last year, and he’s done very well in team drills,” Shannon said. “His strength is that he’s smart and he reads the option well. He doesn’t have blazing speed, but he isn’t slow.”
The passing game proved surprisingly effective last season on the rare occasions it was used. Glaude may not possess the throwing ability of Spakes, and top receiver Josh Turner may be gone, but that doesn’t mean Shannon is forgetting about the forward pass as an offensive weapon. Top returning receiver Brandon Purcell is back and Shannon said he is counting on some youngsters to step up as a second receiver.
But it will once again be the effectiveness of the running game that will determine Beebe’s success. To that end, Shannon is working hard to improve the option attack, an area he said was something of a disappointment in ’07. He has a couple of young speedsters in sophomore-to-be Colby Taylor and junior Victor Howell. Both, he said, possess some of the fastest wheels on the squad.
Defensively, Beebe returns six players.
“Turner and (Kyle) Williams will be tough to replace back there,” Shannon said. “But Purcell started in the secondary all year.
And Glaude played back there so we could play him, too.”
Ideally, though, Shannon wants to keep Glaude fresh to focus on offense. He’s hoping that the extra roster players this season will mean fewer players having to play both offense and defense.
While Shannon’s system will no longer be new to his Badgers, the conference will be. Beebe shifts from the 5A East to the 5A Southeast. Shannon said the new conference will likely feature less speed and less passing than the old one, with Monticello likely to be the “top dog.”
“It’s mostly running teams, so we’ll probably see smashmouth football week in and week out,” he said.
Shannon set the bar high at Beebe after taking the town by storm with his team’s 6-0 start last season. But he said he feels no more pressure than what he feels every year about this time.
“My biggest fear is always to fail,” he admits. “I try to overcome that fear by outworking whoever I’m going up against. The kids have bought into that. As much success as they’ve had in the weight room, they have a lot of confidence. So we have high
expectations.
“But I told them when we got here, ‘We’re going to have high expectations every year.’”
