St. Mary’s Midseason Report

by Marshall Loeffler

St. Mary’s has reached the midpoint of its season with a 5-0 record, but head coach Jacob Carruth sees something more important developing than the wins themselves.

For a new coaching staff and a team learning a new offense, the Tigers’ start has provided an opportunity for the players to see the changes they made in the offseason begin to translate onto the field (albeit in a few wild finishes!). And as the wins have stacked up, Carruth said, the players’ belief in what they are doing has grown.

“When you win and you bring a picture of the program, each week you win, the next one becomes bigger,” Carruth said. “It’s just a natural byproduct of success.”
Carruth said the new staff has brought changes to practice, the weight room and the overall culture of the program. The players were buying into those changes early, he said, but winning has helped reinforce that commitment.

“They were buying in right away for the most part, but then when you see the success and you see the wins start to pile up, then you really get true believers out of them, and they get more enthusiastic about the culture in the process,” Carruth said.

The Tigers’ 5-0 start has not come without the normal challenges, of course. Carruth said the characteristic that has stood out most to him has been the way his players have responded when games have become difficult. “The biggest thing that has exceeded expectations is the fight in these kids, and the resiliency, and never-quit attitude,” he said.

Those close games have provided opportunities for the Tigers to show that resilience. “We’ve been in a lot of close games and a lot of situations where we’ve had to make plays, and they never relent,” Carruth said. “They never quit, regardless of what happened earlier in the game or what stumbling blocks we may have had. When you have that never-quit attitude, you’re going to have a chance at a lot of games.”

At the same time, Carruth said the Tigers still have plenty to clean up as they move into the second half of the season. He said that consistency with assignments is one of the biggest areas of emphasis, particularly with the team learning a new offense.

“It’s a new offense for everybody,” Carruth said. “I’m still learning the players. That continues throughout the season. You don’t learn everything that you need to know just in a week or even a month or the course of the summer. You continue to learn your players throughout the season.”

That learning process has included adjusting personnel and finding the best ways to put players in positions to succeed. Carruth said the Tigers need to become more sound and consistent in their assignments and better understand the job each player has on every play.

With district play beginning and the competition remaining tough, those details will become even more important. “It’s a true measuring stick,” Carruth said of the next stretch of the schedule.

The Tigers also enter that stretch in remarkably good health, something Carruth said has helped the team continue making adjustments throughout the first five weeks. “We’re not holding anything back at this point, there’s no reason to,” he said.

The Week 6 matchup with a really good Logansport team gives St. Mary’s another opportunity to measure how far the program has come since the start of the season. The Tigers have already established that good record, but Carruth said the goal is to keep improving rather than simply protecting what they have accomplished. “We’ve got to continue to get better each week,” he said. “We’re nowhere close to being a finished product.”

For St. Mary’s, that may be the most important part of the first half of the season. The Tigers have won their games, but Carruth said the continued development of the players, the culture and their understanding of the system will determine how much further the team can go in Division IV Select, which is extremely good at the top, with schools like OCS, Ascension Catholic and Riverside Academy built for Superdome runs.

The wins have helped create belief for both the upperclassmen and the rookies. The close games have tested the team’s resilience, and they pulled it out each time so far. Now, with the second half of the season beginning against one of the better teams that they will see, St. Mary’s will find out what that belief and resilience can produce against an increasingly challenging schedule and playoff path.