Carmel opts to focus on bouncing back
During a team lock-in this summer, the Carmel football team locked in on some important business.
“That’s where we came up with our team motto for this year,” Carmel head coach Andy Bitto said. “It’s ‘redemption.’ I thought that was pretty good considering the issues we had last year.”
Carmel was very “un-Carmel-like” last season.
The 3-6 Corsairs trudged through their first losing season in 13 years and broke a string of 12 straight playoff appearances that included a state championship (2003) as well as two semifinal and three quarterfinal finishes.
“Our guys are completely aware that last year was our first losing season in a long time,” Bitto said. “I think we all really want this season to start so that we can get that taste out of our mouths for good. When you’re a competitor, something like that is hard to swallow.”
Bitto says that everyone from the players to the coaches took a long, hard look in the mirror during the off-season.
“We as coaches realized that we needed to change some of the things we do, too,” Bitto said. “We changed some of our off-season stuff. We made our programs more intense, more stringent.
“We also realized that maybe it would help to look at things with a fresh set of eyes.”
Bitto’s answer to that was to bring in veteran coach Bruce Kay as his offensive coordinator. Kay was the head coach at Cary-Grove for 22 years and won a Class 6A state title in 2009 before retiring in 2010.
“Bruce and I have been friends for a long time and knew each other well since we’re both athletic directors and I always thought it would be fun to coach with him if he ever wanted to get back into it,” Bitto said. “He ran the football at Cary-Grove a lot, probably more than we do at Carmel. He’s part of the option cult, just like we are. But he kind of runs it in a different way and I like that. He’s done a lot of research about (how to perfect the option).
“To the naked eye, what we’re doing out there may look very similar to what we’ve done in the past, but from our perspective, some things are very different.”
Deep into training camp, Bitto wasn’t sure what kind of look he wanted at quarterback. He says there was a stiff competition going between senior Nick Grandolfo and junior Mike Huiras. Grandolfo played quarterback for Carmel last season.
“It’s about the turnovers for us,” Bitto said. “We had a lot of turnovers last year, so we’ve got to have a guy out there who can really take care of the ball and run the option well for us.”
Running backs Mitch Zovnic, Jake Kane and Darrius Crump will all get plenty of touches in the option as well. Zovnic is back after a hip flexor injury that kept him out seven weeks last season.
“He’s a bruiser at about 200 pounds,” Bitto said of Zovnic. “But he can still be a slasher. He runs a 4.5 40.”
Defensively, the Corsairs are anchored by returning linebackers RC Cox and Nickai Poyser, who combined for nearly 200 tackles last season.
“Our defense was awesome last season,” Bitto said. “We lost to St. Pat’s 6-3 in two overtimes last season. That was a great game by our defense to hold them to 6, but we missed 4 field goals in that game and had the chance to score two or three touchdowns and didn’t.
“We really struggled on offense and on special teams last year and you just can’t beat good teams like that. We know the areas we need to improve and the good thing is that we were a lot closer to being good than being bad last year. Most of our losses were close game where we had the chance to win.
“I think that’s something to build off of. We’re cautiously optimistic at this point.”