By David Rice | JTV Sports
Wednesday August 13th
The Western Panthers were heartbroken last year at the end of their playoff run, and that gave them extra motivation to work even harder in the offseason.
Parma Western, under a 1st year coach, Nick Rulewicz, finished 8-4 and won a district championship. The team is hungry for more though, and this 2023 senior class wants to accomplish more. “We feel like we can play more than the 9 guaranteed games”. “There are 9 games but we want 12-15 games left before we hang it up”, said the players.
Despite the teammate love between the class of 2022 and 23 seniors, the seniors for this year’s team have (one of their) mottos as “trophies”, “be better than the previous senior class and play 12-15 games”.
Western’s summer workouts have also been going well as Coach Rulewicz has a full off-season to work with the team compared to last year. “I was hired in late April last year, and right around this time (August) is when we got everything rolling. It has been nice to have a full off-season for workouts and such”, said Rulewicz. “Our numbers are also very good. We have over 40 on varsity and 30+ on our JV team”. The coaching staff mentioned that they will be trying to continue the growth each day and to “chase the lion”.
Western sees Lumen Christi as a conference favorite along with other challenges as Harper Creek and Marshall. They are looking forward to playing against their rivals with their returning players. Overall, Parma Western has only 3 returning on offense (2 of them in new positions) and 8 returning on defense along with 6 of their front 7.
Some of the team weaknesses include their 4 losses last year (first match against Harper Creek, Hastings, St John’s, and Lumen Christi) and fighting through in-game adversity. Inexperience in the backfield is another major weakness as well, with having either Ty Keeler or Caden Oliver at Quarterback.
But despite some of the weaknesses, Coach Rulewicz said all of the grades within the program mesh and work well together, and he is looking forward to doing some more damage in this 2022 season.
Parma Western opens the season on Friday, August 26th at home against St. John’s, one of their 4 losses last year.