New faces to lead Jags in search for title run

Blue Springs South head football coach Greg Oder sat behind his desk, his hands clasped behind his head, and smiled.
He was expecting the question – and he had a quick answer.
“Zero.”
The question: How many returning starters do you have on the defensive side of the ball.
“There are going to be a lot of new faces out there,” said Oder, whose Jaguars won state in 2006, lost their final game of the 2007 season to Rockhurst – ending a 24-game winning streak – and graduated a class of seniors that filled most starting roles.
The Jaguars were so deep last year that most backups were seniors.
One of the lone familiar faces on the offensive side of the ball will be two-year starter Blaine Dalton, who led the Jaguars to that state title when he was a sophomore.
“A lot of the guys I played with the past two years are gone,” Dalton said, “but that’s all right. We’re going to be all right this year. We have some great coaches and we’re working hard.”
This is not the first season Oder and his staff have had to rebuild at South.
“We had three starters back in 2006 and four back in 2007 and zero this year,” Oder said. “And we have four back on the offensive side this year. But the four we have back are very good – Blaine, Randy (Haller, offensive tackle), Travis (Shipman, offensive line) and Jake (Scarbo, offensive line) – and (wide receiver) Nate Ingram played quite a bit last year.
“But when you think about the guys we lost – ’Te (Donte Strickland, The Examiner Defensive Player of the Year), Kellen (Bartlett, who is playing at Utah State), Zach (Wilson, Northwest Missouri State), Steven (Brooks, Drake) – well, you don’t really replace their leadership and what they mean to the team on and off the playing field.”
But Oder has been doing this a long time. He is entering his eighth season and owns a 57-16 record.
Oder’s Jaguars will open the season in extraordinary fashion as they play host to defending state champion Rockhurst at 11 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 31, at Larry Stewart Memorial Stadium in a game that will be nationally televised on ESPN.
“I hear a lot of gloom and doom with all our new guys, and opening on national television against Rock,” Oder said, “but we’ll be all right. We have guys who played behind some pretty good players. And we’ve seen these kids in 7-on-7 and summer camps.
“We have some talent. We don’t have the Kellen Bartletts and ’Te Stricklands, but we have kids who can play football and we’re coaching them and getting them ready for this season.”
When asked what he expects from all the hoopla surrounding the ESPN game, Oder simply said, “We’re in our first week of practice. I haven’t even thought about that, to be honest with you.”