Maryvale quarterback Blair Estarfaa was a Second Team Divisional All-Star as a junior and “is running the offense well” in the early stages of the season, according to varsity head coach Steve Griffin. Photo by Nick LoVerde Purchase color photos at www.BeeNews.com Maryvale football coach and Athletics Director Steve Griffin has been studying with great interest the way that football teams in Ohio and Pennsylvania conduct the sport, and while current state standards won’t allow him to fully implement what he’s learned, he is willing to try something new with the 2010 Flyers.

Maryvale has 26 players on its varsity team, but this season the Flyers have been practicing together with the JV squad, giving Maryvale nearly 50 kids on the same page. Griffin is hoping that familiarity and focus on one overall goal will lead to a return to the Flyers’ glory days of the recent past.

“We ’ve been practicing together with the JV — some of our second team guys right now are JV kids — and we’re planning on dressing a lot of kids for the games so that, if a starter gets hurt and a JV kid is the second guy, that JV kid will play in the varsity game that week,” Griffin said. “It’s been working real well so far and the kids have been really upbeat about it. They aren’t standing around at practice anymore. All of the coaches coach both games too, so now we have six coaches working with the kids every day.”

“We ’re hoping to change what’s been going on over the last few years, where we’ve been getting to the first round of the playoffs and losing,” Griffin added.

The Flyers should have plenty of weapons at their disposal as they seek to turn around their playoff fortunes this season, led by senior tri-captain and First Team Division All-star Bilal Clay (running back/linebacker). Clay, who ran for over 1,000 yards last season, has come back bigger and stronger this season, according to Griffin, and recently ran the 40-yard dash in 4.4 seconds.

Seniors Jake Krier (center/ linebacker) and Sean Hamilton (offensive/defensive line) will serve as the team’s other co-captains this season. Krier was a Second team Division All-star last season, while Hamilton has dropped an amazing 110 pounds from his 2009 playing weight and “is moving great” and “is a lot faster” but is “still a big bull for us,” according to Griffin.

Other returning players hoping to have a positive impact on the team’s fortunes include seniors Blair Estarfaa (quarterback/safety), Shane Mullen (wide receiver/ cornerback) and Gared Brock (6-foot-3, 280-pound offensive guard/defensive tackle), as well as juniors Sean Barr (running back/linebacker) and Nick Weaver (offensive tackle/ linebacker).

“Blair is running the offense real well, and we’re looking forward to what Gared can do after having not played football as a sophomore or junior,” Griffin said. “Sean’s brought a lot of intensity with him from Springville, which has been great to see at practice.”

Sophomore Tyler Graham, meanwhile, will be starting at free safety despite this being his first year at the varsity level.

“Offensively, our backfield is very good with some tough kids back there who can run the ball, and defensively, with our switch from 4-3 to 3-4, the kids seem to just be enjoying playing it,” Griffin said. “We ’ve got a lot of different looks and we’re throwing a lot more blitzing into the mix.”

The Flyers finally got to see where they stack up against someone other than themselves last Saturday when they scrimmaged South Park, St. Mary’s and Eden, and while it was expected that there would be room for improvement, Griffin was generally pleased with what he saw from his team.

“The scrimmage went really well,” Griffin said. “The other three schools all had good teams and everybody seemed pretty even out there. Everybody had good battles. Offensively, I thought we were ahead of where I expected us to be, but our defensive line has got to get better. But, the kids who played Saturday played hard from the beginning of the scrimmage until the end. I think they’ve finally starting to get the ‘play a full game from beginning to end’ concept we’ve been pushing. They see that they can’t come out or finish slowly.”

Maryvale will attempt to play a full game Friday night when it hosts crosstown rival Cleveland Hill. The Eagles took last year’s latest installment in the series, and there’s nothing more that Griffin and the Flyers would love to do than to give the Eagles their receipt for last year’s outcome.

“Cleveland Hill is full of tough kids who run hard, so we’ve really got to work hard on our gang tackling,” Griffin said. “If we don’t gang tackle, they’re going to beat us. Offensively, we’ve got to make sure we don’t have any penalties. We have a solid offense this year, but we’ve still got to concentrate on playing a clean game.”

e-mail: jnadolinski@beenews.com