Up to the challenge

Published 12:01 am Thursday, August 18, 2011

MARYSVILLE — In 2007, Marysville Pilchuck head football coach Brandon Carson took over a struggling program that was in desperate need of leadership.

Five years later, the Tomahawks go into this season shooting for their fourth-consecutive playoff berth.

Just a few miles away on Getch

ell Hill overlooking Marysville, Davis Lura is looking to build a similar tradition. With a team made up of mostly underclassmen and inexperienced football players, Lura, the first-ever head coach of the varsity football team at Marysville Getchell, knows he’s in for a challenge.

“The way to look at it is we’re a first-year high school,” Lura said in between shouting out instructions during drills at his team’s first official varsity practice Wednesday.

“We know it’s going to be a challenge. But as I told the kids, we’ve got nothing to lose. We have to see the positives in everything.”

The biggest thing for his players is presenting themselves as a classy program on and off the field, said Lura, who is excited about being part of starting a tradition at Marysville Getchell.

“We have to find out who we are as a team,” Lura said. “When things go bad, kids are going to ask, ‘What’s the rule here?’ We have to have a consistent answer for that.”

At MP, Carson kept intact many of the old traditions of Tomahawks football, including a heavy reliance on the running game, changed others and said it was key that the coaches and the players were on board.

“It started with a common vision across the (coaching) staff on both sides of the football,” Carson said. “We had everybody from the players to our staff buy in.”

The coaches helping Lura create a vision at Getchell are a mix of the old Marysville guard and coaches Lura had on his staff before at West Seattle. Lura said he was fortunate to have Rudy Grandbois and John Natterstad join his staff. Grandbois is a former Marysville Pilchuck head coach and Natterstad coached Getchell’s C-team last season. According to Lura, nearly half of this year’s MG team played on the 2010 C-team.

As for the players, Lura didn’t waste any time denoting who would be the Chargers’ leaders. He named his captains on Wednesday’s first day of practice: junior quarterback Dylan Diedrich and senior linebacker Phillip Stewart. Stewart recently moved to Marysville from California, but Diederich was buried on the depth chart at MP and now has a chance to get some playing time.

“I like having the opportunity to show what I can do,” Diedrich said.

Giving players a chance to play is one of the benefits of the new team in Marysville. Many players on MG’s roster would likely be watching from the sidelines this fall if it weren’t for the new school, which opened a year ago.

“I’m so excited for these kids who are getting the opportunity to play,” Marysville School District athletic director Greg Erickson said. “Some of these kids have never played football before and some day they’ll look back and say ‘Wow, we started that.'”

Diedrich, who was one of close to 60 kids who turned out Wednesday, is thrilled to be a part of the Chargers’ inaugural varsity football team.

“It’s great to be the first generation of football players for this school,” said Diedrich, who took part in all of MG’s summer camps, workouts and scrimmages.

Marysville, which hasn’t had two high schools since 1975, now has a pair of football teams that could become fast rivals, especially if MP moves next season to 3A, Getchell’s classification. Erickson said that move is a distinct possibility.

“We’re trying to preach to these kids that they aren’t just representing their school, they’re representing the community,” said Erickson, who has been AD at the Marysville School District for 18 years. “We hope that the rivalry is a healthy one.”

With the season just over two weeks away, Lura said he’s focusing on the small details and getting his players to trust they know what they’re doing.

“We have to start believing in ourselves,” Lura said.