BELDING, Mich. — “The kids realize what they’re capable of and we’re always competing against our capabilities, so we know what we can do and we’ve also been preaching to our kids that it’s easier to get to the top than to stay there, so we need to work extremely hard. We’re probably going to have a target on our backs, but we’re going to take it one game at a time starting with Ionia, and we’ll see where the pieces fall,” said head coach Monty Price.
Belding football certainly turned some heads in 2022. And they know they’ve got the potential to repeat their success.
“I think that experience in the playoffs, it should’ve been a lot more and we should’ve gone even further, but being in the district final, I think we can go out there and win it this year. Now we know what the pressure is and what it feels like to be in the district final. I think we can definitely be there and know what it feels like and actually win it this year,” said Jack Ward.
“Because we’ve seen what we did last year and we know we can do much better than that. We’re just going to put all of our effort into that and see what happens,” said Anthony Szubinski.
The Black Knights earned a home playoff win against Tri-County before falling to Oakridge in the district final. They had several offensive linemen get hurt throughout the season, but with them back, they believe they’ll be even better on the line.
“We’re very optimistic about our guys up front. And not only do we have some of those kids back, but we think we’re, in most cases, two deep or even three deep in each position. We’ve got a lot of kids playing the line. That’s good, that’s competitive. So if we do have another injury, heaven forbid that we do, but we’ve got some kids that can step up and get the job done,” said Price.
Belding knew going into this year that they needed to beef up their schedule a bit, and that’s exactly what they did.
“We want to schedule up if we can. We had the opportunity to get some larger schools. Division 2, Division 4 in Spring Lake. That’s very good competition. We’re not going to run from that, we’re going to play it. And if anything, if they beat us, I think it makes us better. We want to play the toughest schedule we can so we’re not afraid or going to shy away from bigger schools or tough opponents,” said Price.
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