Sandies set to hit the road again

Lesson learned.

Amarillo High head coach Brad Thiessen and his players will bring valuable experience from last year along for their marathon ride through District 2-5A.

Last season, the Sandies played their first season in the 10-team district where teams reside in San Angelo, Odessa, Midland and Lubbock, producing not only week-in and week-out challenges on the field but unforgiving distances on bus trips.

AHS finished 4-5 in the district race last season, missing the playoffs.

The Sandies return 19 lettermen and nine starters.

“We had to deal with the travel burnout issue,” said Thiessen of a topic the vast majority of schools in Texas don’t worry about. “We have traveled before. But it’s getting in so late. We dealt with a little burnout from kids and some from our coaches.

“We will definitely try to find some break time this year just to keep everybody fresh.”

The Sandies return four offensive starters and will open with a new quarterback in senior J.C. Casas, who saw action last year as a backup. Anchoring the line will be seniors Dalton Carter and Nick Wheeler, each of whom saw starting time last year.

Thiessen said the strength of the offense will be the talent and depth at receiver in returnees Dalton Koller, Will Bryant and Haeden Henderson, along with juniors Michael Baca and Nolan David.

Five starters return on defense, led by Division I prospect junior James Castleman at defensive end, along with senior Blair Dickey and Brady Burdett in the secondary. Thiessen also praised inside linebackers and team captains Conner Jacob and Griffin Douhitt, along with outside linebacker Ivan Castaneda.

“I’m not concerned about who we are playing,” Thiessen said. “We just need to stay healthy because we aren’t a deep team. We can play with anybody on our schedule. We just need to play better than we did last year in some areas.

“I like our speed on defense. We have more than we had in the past. And then we have the five receivers we have confidence in. Now we are inexperienced as far as starters go in a lot of key areas. But that doesn’t concern me. What we do know is it’s a long year (nine district games). We need to find the players that play the best.’’