By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
The Houston football team started last season with five seniors on the roster, but two suffered season-ending injuries early on and a third broke his arm and played the rest of the year in a cast.
With just two healthy seniors on the field, the Tigers dropped their final six games and finished with a 2-7 record that included an overtime loss to Forsyth in district play.
“Hopefully we can just stay healthy and not deal with any of that this year,” head coach Eric Sloan said.
Houston returns at least seven starters, but did graduate three players who earned All-SCA honors: second team running back Bailey Hurst (1,115 yards and 14 TD’s), second team linebacker Dmitri Zveniatckovskii (95 tackles, 4 TFL) and honorable mention defensive back Zach Fuwell (36 tackles, 7 TFL).
The Tigers return four starters on the offensive line, including seniors Casey Merckling and Harold Lassiter, who each earned honorable mention All-SCA honors last year – Merckling was also an All-District selection in Class 2 District 3. Houston also has junior Trent Shelton, senior Keeton Goetz and junior Brady Brookshire up front.
At wide receiver, Houston will utilize senior Zac Williams (14 catches, 156 yards), sophomore Jordan Arthur and senior Austin Goetz. Senior Anthony Carroll (54 carries, 198 yards) will start at fullback, senior Dakota James (38 yards, 1 TD) will start at tailback and junior Wyatt Hughes returns at quarterback after passing for 676 yards and five touchdowns and adding 76 yards and a touchdown on the ground.
“I think we’ll be a little bit more balanced than we were last year,” Sloan said. “Bailey Hurst carried the ball a ton for us last year but I think we’re going to be able to balance that out a little bit and we’ve got a couple pretty good athletes in our receiver position that we’ll be able to throw the ball to. Hopefully we won’t rely so heavily on one guy.”
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The team’s defensive line consists of Merckling (39 tackles, 4 TFL), Brookshire (13 tackles, 2 TFL) and Shelton (4 tackles). The linebacking corps includes James (71 tackles, 4 TFL), Carroll (55 tackles, 9 TFL), Lassiter (71 tackles, 3 TFL), sophomore Maleki Morgan, Keeton Goetz (44 tackles) and junior Grayson Mitchell. Lassiter earned All-District honors last year.
Austin Goetz (31 tackles), Williams (18 tackles) and junior Wyatt Hughes (30 tackles) will play in the secondary.
“We’re going to be real aggressive,” Sloan said. “We play a stacked defense so we blitz a lot and try to put people in some conflict, showing different looks and bringing different guys at different times. That’s the style we like to play.”
Houston’s overall numbers stand at roughly 50 players, the most players Sloan’s had in his eight-plus years there. It’s a tight-knit group that’s hungry for success, he said.
“The problem is going to be depth,” he said. “As soon as somebody needs air or gets a little dinged then we’re right back to the inexperience we’ve had in the past. The good thing is looking towards the future we probably have more than 20 freshmen and 12 or 13 sophomores so our youth numbers are really good. When you sub out you just get really young.”
Houston will head to Mountain Grove for the jamboree with Willow Springs and Thayer also attending. The Tigers open the season with three-straight road games: at Orchard Farm, at Fayette and at Salem.
