Cathedral Football Working On Creating Feeder System

(KNSI) – Cathedral High School football will have a lone man in charge this year. After sharing the coaching duties for the 2021 season Andrew Leintz is flying solo as leader of the Crusader varsity gridiron squad.

Cathedral is coming off a 3-7 season but Leintz says a lot of valuable lessons were learned. He believes the goal of last season was to teach the team how to be competitive and in 2022 you’ll see the next step for an experienced club.

Leintz says winning football often means being able to overcome when you aren’t playing at your best. He says the game is a grind and not everything will go right.

“We want to come out and play winning football. I’m not going to come out here and say, “Now, we’re going to win every game,” but we’re going to do a lot of things that lead to winning football.”

Leintz wants balance out of his offense. He isn’t quite sure if that means an equal number of plays or similar production yet, but when speaking with him everything keeps coming back to the word balance.

Leintz says he has two players that are on a lot of coaching radars. First is tight end and defensive end Kellen Kinzer. The senior is listed at 6’4″ and 215 pounds. Kinzer is the brawn to Emanuel Kutzera’s skill. Kutzera is also a senior, who will play at wide receiver and defensive back.

Some of the program’s most significant changes will happen off the field. Leintz says he wants Cathedral to create a feeder system similar to what you see with public schools. Terminology and scheme from the varsity squad and the basics of the game are all taught in little league in an age-appropriate manner at the town level.

Leintz talks about what the progression should be.

“We have our varsity playbook. In first through fourth grade, they just need to know five to 10 percent of that. Just get very basic with terminology, a couple of plays here and there. And we need to scale that, right? By the time they’re freshmen they need to know 60, 70 percent.”

Cathedral opens up on Thursday, September 1st at New London-Spicer. Leintz says the Wildcats are a tough, hard-nosed power football team. He says it is how the game is meant to be played. It will provide the Crusaders with a stern test early in a season that holds a lot of promise.

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