(KMAland) — The KMAland Summer Football Preview series continues today with the ACGC Chargers.<\/p>\n
Coach Cody Matthewson and his Chargers have created a standard with a total of 36 wins over the past four seasons, including back-to-back 10-1 records.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe kids continue to work hard,\u201d Coach Matthewson told KMA Sports. \u201cI think the kind of buzzword that we really use a lot is tradition doesn’t graduate. That\u2019s something that can connect with the kids. At the end of the day, when we use that term, we\u2019ve talked about year in and year out how we\u2019re gonna graduate guys and have graduated guys, and I think those years speak for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
That creed will be put to the test again this season as they look to replace star quarterback Jathan South, who never lost a regular season game during his two years of starting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got a couple guys who are gonna battle for (starting quarterback), but we went into 2023 with no quarterback at all,\u201d Matthewson said. \u201cPlayed both of them and rotated them at the Gatorade scrimmage. And Jathan South never lost a regular season game in his career, so I think that kind of sets the tradition doesn\u2019t graduate type mentality and understanding the importance to it. We\u2019re gonna plug in, we\u2019re gonna get you ready and we\u2019re gonna put guys in the best position to be successful. It\u2019s the next man up mentality. I think our guys really buy into that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Along with South\u2019s loss, another 1,000-yard rusher \u2014 Mike Fuller \u2014 has graduated. However, senior-to-be Joe Crawford went for 991 yards and classmate Brexton Schneider had 343 yards on the ground for the vaunted ACGC rushing attack.<\/p>\n
Further, the offense may have some time to find their way with their new faces, as the defense returns star senior-to-be Xander Harwood, who had 11.5 tackles for loss among his team-best 70.5 tackles on his way to earning the district\u2019s top defensive player award.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s not gonna be a guy who\u2019s gonna scare you when you walk off the bus,\u201d Matthews said, \u201cbut it\u2019s a kid that flies around and has a knack for the football. We use the phrase of playing with your hair on fire, and he sure as heck does that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senior Carter Richter is another star defensive player, as he has earned back-to-back First Team All-State honors along the defensive line.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Richter) is a huge piece,\u201d Matthewson said. \u201cJack Sheeder is going to be getting more reps on the defensive line, as he was just kind of an offense only guy and rotated in. (Schneider) was a guy who was a headhunter for us last year. We might move him around a little bit at our monster position. (Crawford and Tommy Skram) are two defensive backs that started every game for us last year. Both of them are back, and then you\u2019ve got a lot of guys that rotated in and really stepped up.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Chargers are slated to play in Class A District 7 this cycle, and they are joined by AHSTW, Central Decatur, Mount Ayr, Nodaway Valley, Riverside and Southwest Valley. Their non-district games are at home with Panorama and at Madrid.<\/p>\n
Check out much more with Coach Matthewson in the full interview below.<\/p>\n
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Thank you for reading kmaland.com<\/p>\n
At KMA, we attempt to be accurate in our reporting. If you see a typo or mistake in a story, please contact us by emailing kmaradio@kmaland.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(KMAland) — The KMAland Summer Football Preview series continues today with the ACGC Chargers. Coach Cody Matthewson and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2064],"tags":[241,7,11093,1014,262,2444,2443,6,9],"class_list":{"0":"post-227322","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-chargers","8":"tag-chargers","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-local_sports","11":"tag-los-angeles","12":"tag-los-angeles-chargers","13":"tag-losangeles","14":"tag-losangeleschargers","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114897530823015946","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}