Madonna heads on the road to begin Monz era
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HANCOCK, Md. -- Madonna has had to wait a little longer than other teams in the area to take the field for the first time this season, and they will be traveling quite a ways to do so.
Game week has finally arrived for the Blue Dons, however, as they are set to begin the Mauro Monz era with a trip to Hancock, Md., Friday night for what is the opener for both teams.
"After almost of a month of training camp and a bye week, the kids are very excited and looking forward to finally playing a game, that's for sure," Monz, the first-year Madonna head coach said. "The preseason went great. We went to WVU's 7-on-7 camp, Ohio State's 7-on-7 camp, Washington and Jefferson (camp), so we did some things this summer they haven't done here in a while to try and get our kids competing, get our kids fit for football and then we went right into training camp.
"The kids have been great, the summer has been great and we're really excited to get going."
The Blue Dons, who are looking for a youthful group to come together to make a run at a playoff return, are excited about the opportunity making a long trip provides, rather than focused on the challenge of it.
"If you look around our regional area, big time teams play in big time games, so as a private Catholic school, it's exciting to have a chance to go three hours away to another state to play," Monz said. "Our kids are excited for it, it's something not every school gets the chance to do.
"A lot of the bigger schools do this, so we're excited to get to do something very similar."
Monz, who has several yeas of experience at the collegiate level, is no stranger to planning such trips.
"We have an itinerary, we have talked about the logistics of it (Monday) with the booster club," Monz said. "When to feed the team, when the bus is going to pick us up, we planned it all out. Experience is helping out on that end."
The Panthers, while a new opponent on Madonna's schedule, are no stranger to West Virginia Class A teams, as they have four, including the Dons, on the schedule this season. The others are Morgantown Trinity Christian, Hundred and Clay-Battelle.
Hancock played Trinity Christian, Clay-Battelle, Hundred and Paden City in a 1-7 campaign a season ago.
With it being the opener and a squad that's much different than the one that was senior-heavy last season under the tutelage of Dan Rovira, Monz knows his defense will likely be farther along in learning the new systems than his offense, but has been impressed with the progress both units have made going into Friday.
"I'm really excited about our defense, it was really solid in our two scrimmages," Monz said. "We gave up a couple longer runs we wish we could have back against Tyler in our second scrimmage, they were just a couple breakdowns. The goal for Week 1 is just to tighten up a couple fundamental things on defense.
"Offensively, that is always the hardest to get going. It comes later usually. But, Lucas McAllister, our quarterback, has done a great job picking up our offense and our offensive line with a bunch of new starters is starting to gel.
"I look forward to having an explosive offense."
The kick in the Old Line State is set for 7 p.m.