INDIANAPOLIS — Few things in sports are more difficult than building a football program from scratch, as the Marian College Knights found out last fall.
In its first season, Marian went 1-9 and was outscored by an average of 24 points per game while playing five NAIA ranked teams. No one knew the difficulty of the task more than Marian head coach Ted Karras.
“It’s one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever taken on in my coaching career, but it’s been rewarding and I think we laid a good foundation and are building slowly but surely,” Karras said after the Knights’ spring practice session on Thursday.
Marian had just 40 players in uniform last spring. This year the number is up to 70, and the Knights hope to build on last year’s valuable experience and offseason growth.
“I think the guys have come together as a team,” Karras said. “I think chemistry is growing and they know the system a little bit now. That’s a huge thing.”
Helping cement Marian’s foundation are nine former Hendricks County players — Stephen Howe, Devin Owens, Ricky Parrish, and Mike Keltz of Avon — with the latter two playing baseball this spring; Robb Hornett and Jeff McClure of Brownsburg; Brock Caraboa and Austin Thomen of Plainfield; and Ben Berger of Tri-West.
In his freshman season at linebacker, Caraboa finished as the Knights’ third-leading tackler and had five tackles for loss, an interception, and six passes defended. The team went full-contact — even on the quarterback — in Thursday’s workout, much to the liking of the former Quaker.
“It’s awesome — the defense has been talking about that the whole week,” Caraboa said. “Now we want to get our shot at (the quarterbacks). It’s a good time out here.”
Caraboa was like most of the Knights last fall. On a team made up mostly of freshmen and sophomores, they had to go up against players much older, bigger, and more seasoned.
“I thought I knew a bunch of stuff but got here and realized I didn’t know anything,” Caraboa said. “It’s a totally different game, especially as a freshman playing against seniors. We’re still a young team, but I think we’ll be all right this year.”
Hornett joined Caraboa, Parrish, and Keltz on the defense last season and was eighth on the squad in tackles. He will be one of the Knights’ few seniors in the fall and feels the team will be much better prepared than they were last season.
“We have a better knowledge of the game,” Hornett said. “We’ve got a lot stronger in the weight room. We have a pretty tough conditioning program and we’ve had 6 a.m. workouts. It’s been a pretty tough spring.”
Howe — who had six catches for 87 yards in his freshman season at tight end — is a prime example of how hard the Knights have been working. Since graduating from Avon, he has added 50 pounds to his solid 6-6 frame. Being able to go through the experience with three of his former high school teammates has made it all the better.
“It’s great and we have great chemistry,” Howe said. “We’ve been playing together all our lives. We know what we expect from each other, we push each other in the weight room and on the field, and it’s great playing together at the next level.”
Like their inaugural campaign last fall, Marian will play its home games at Pike High School’s sparkling facility. But just over the hill from where they are practicing, the Knights can see their new stadium — where they will play starting in 2009 — coming to life.
Going into the team’s second year, Karras expects his squad to make significant gains on the field.
“We want to improve in the win department — I’m not going to put a number on it, but we have to improve there,” Karras said. “I want us to get better at our positions, keep learning the system, and grow more as a family. I think that’s really happened here after going through a season, a winter, and now a spring.”
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