The Rosemary Clarke Middle School Sharks played their first game against the Faith Lutheran Crusaders last Saturday and lost 8-0.
Sharks Coach Jeff Koenig just took over the team this year. He has been coaching Pop Warner football for some time, so the transition has been painless. He brought with him a new system and feels the Sharks need time to learn it.
“We are running the same offense (Jet Sweep) as the high school, so it’s new to the kids. We did not have the ability to work all summer with them so it is a work in progress. The whole idea is if we can get these kids ready for high school and get into Joe’s system, they will know the different positions. I think it will help the high school. Joe (Clayton) helped us out with that. We have their play book and defensive plays too,” he said.
Koenig feels his team did well for their first game. The defense was really strong and held Faith to just eight points. He even said the game could have been 0-0 if it were not for some mental mistakes and penalties.
“We did good at the Faith game,” he said. “Defense played really well, but we couldn’t move the ball very well. We have some issues with blocking. Hopefully we will fix that this week. Faith had a long sustained drive. We had them stopped and then we roughed the kicker and they scored.”
On defense, the coach feels Bryce Odegard had a fantastic game.
“He had an interception and played exceptionally well. He is a corner back. Faith likes to throw the ball, and he must have had three knock downs and that one interception,” the coach said.
The Sharks have 32 players out on the A-team and 44 players out for the B-team. Koenig is in charge of both, but has a separate coach for the B-team.
“They are learning and each week we will teach them more. In the league we play in, it’s basically a middle school league called the NYFL. It’s almost a Pop Warner-type league with all Vegas teams. We don’t play teams like Moapa and Boulder City. They are all in different leagues. We have teams coming out here that I don’t know anything about. I really don’t know if they will be really good or really bad,” he said.
The Sharks have the luxury of playing all their games at home because all the teams they play do not have a football field.