St. Marys’ Colton Mabry fights for yardage against Wapakoneta’s Kaden Ware during a 2022 game at St. Marys.
ST. MARYS — The transition from father to son, or in this case, Doug to Bo Frye, has been a relatively smooth and successful one as the son has posted a 19-6 mark and made deep trips into the postseason after taking over as the St. Marys head coach three years ago.
However, one thing that has eluded Frye is winning the Western Buckeye League, and he hopes to rectify that this year as he enters his third year. St. Mary, which has 26 WBL crowns, has not garnered a league title since 2018.
“It will never change here in St. Marys,” the Rider head coach said. “The No. 1 goal is to win the WBL championship and when you don’t win the WBL championship people start getting a little fussy. We lead the league in WBL championships with 26.
“At some point we have to get back at winning WBL championships and every year with our people and how hard we work and are committed to football I think we have to stay in that mix and the last two years if things would have bounced our way we would have had two league championships.”
The Roughriders, coming off a 9-3 year, return 11 starters on both sides of the ball. In 2022, the Riders’ two regular seasons losses came to Wapakoneta, a 29-22, overtime loss and a thrashing by Van Wert, 70-30.
Frye is hoping his team can utilize that late-season push, along with senior leadership, to gain early momentum this year.
“Last year we didn’t return a lot of starters on defense but we returned quite a few on offense so we knew we were pretty decent there and big up front, and we could push people around,” Frye said. “About midseason we were 3-2 about midpack and at the end of the season we kind of turned it on and the defense played a lot better.”
After the Van Wert game, the Riders ran the table in the regular season and outscored opponents 194-45.
“We finished well but obviously we ran into a really good team in West Holmes (in the second game of the playoffs) but it was a successful year. It kept us near the top of the league, which we were trying to do and when were 3-2, we worried there because it could have gone the other way.”Lucky for us we had kids that fought through, and we stayed at the top of the league.”
Like last season, Frye knows the early part of the season, especially with some holes to fill on both sides of the ball, that getting off to a good start is imperative as the Riders face St. Henry in their lone nonconference affair followed by games against Celina, Defiance, Wapakoneta, Ottawa-Glandorf and Van Wert. The lone home game is the contest against Defiance.
“We are going to have to hit it on a spring this year,” Frye said. “Four of the first five games are away and our first five games are against the top four teams in the league last year so it is not an easy one so the schedule makers didn’t do us any favors but we can’t change the schedule.”
Frye said the whole program is moving in the right direction and the numbers are high with more than 80 student-athletes suiting up for the Riders.
“We have a ton of kids out and our kids show up and our kids work extremely hard in the weight room year round so we are not struggling in that aspect. Kids want to play football and the problem this year is that a lot of kids haven’t played on Friday nights. We are green in a lot of areas.”
Senior leadership will be play a big role for the Riders due to some of the inexperience and even though it is a small group, a dozen, Frye points out they are doing a great job right now.
“Of those 12 seniors, eight of them contributed a great deal last year,” Frye said. “There is not a ton of them but they all have game experience.”
Senior Cody Wallace, who was hurt towards the end of the year, returns as a three-year starter at quarterback and brings stability to the vaunted Wing-T offense that has been a mainstay at St. Marys for years.
Carter Steinberg, who saw time at quarterback after Wallace went down, also returns and should see time in the Rider backfield.
In addition to those two juniors Dominik Osborne and Colton Mabry return as running backs and Keaton Fischbach is back at tight end. In other words, there is plenty of building up front and one of the essential components if the Riders are going to be effective on the ground.
“We graduated our entire offensive line last year and, other than our tight end position, none of the kids played up front last year,” Frye said. “We usually have a starter back but no they all graduated. We are definitely a work in progress up there but have a lot of great kids that have had a great offseason that are ready to contribute.”
Frye added that having Wallace, who he said is like having another coach on the field, back at as the signal caller allows him and the rest of the offensive coaching staff on restructuring the offensive line and perfecting the execution of the offense.
The same holds true on the defensive side of the ball as the team returns three full-time starters in Kevin Perry, Logan Compton and Hunter Mabry and part-time starter Hayden Davis.
“The secondary is the question mark,” Frye said. “Kevin Perry, who led the league at linebacker in tackles, is going to play some safety but it is a fire drill right now of who is going to be in there. We have a lot of bodies but we just have to figure out which ones we are going to play.”
Frye said a couple of freshmen are in the mix of seeing time in the defensive backfield.
“It is definitely a work in progress but there is some talent back there but there is just not a lot of Friday night experience back there.”
Frye added that the players have come into the offseason working extremely hard and described them as a smart and reliable group. St. Marys has done five 7-on-7 sessions in the summer and this has given the Rider coaching staff a chance to see who is developing into starters.
“They are a fun group to be around because of their coachability and their work ethic,” Frye said. “I’m not sure 100 percent how good we are but they are enjoyable to be around and everything we are coaching them to do they are doing so we are going to continuously get better throughout the year which you will see.
“There have been some growing pains in those 7 on 7 but they are great for making sure you get the right people on the field in Week 1.”
The No. 1 goal for the defense will be to stop the run but Frye said they want to work on limiting the other teams’ passing attacks in order to make teams work to score.
“We want to keep balls in front of us and make teams work to score points,” Frye said. “We need to make sure we bend but don’t break and don’t give up home runs over our heads.”
Frye said a motivating factor for a number of these players is that they are getting their shot to play and help carry on the proud football tradition that has been established at St. Marys and this year perhaps come home with a WBL title.
“It is a unique situation here in St. Marys where guys have to wait until their senior year to play and they have to wait until it is their turn because we have (more than) 80 kids and kids come out for football at St. Marys. A lot of the motivation for the kids is intrinsic because they are finally getting their shot to play and you keep them motivated because you have so many kids and you fire them if they are not getting the job done.
“The best we keep them motivated is we keep them on their heels, and we play kids when the time comes.”
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TEAM PROFILE
Coach: Bo Frye (third season)
Division: IV
Last year’s record: 9-3 (7-2 WBL)
Ticket information: roughridersports.net/event-tickets
Returning 2022 varsity letter winners include: Cody Wallace (Sr. QB), Carter Steinberg (Sr., QB/RB/DB), Kevin Perry (Sr., LB), Logan Compton (Sr., DL), Hunter Mabry (Sr.. DL), Logan Rush (Sr., K), Jacob Kessler (Jr., DB), Hayden Davis (Jr., LB), Dominik Osborne (Jr., RB), Colton Mabry (Jr., RB), Keaton Fischbach (Jr., TE), Carson Sturwold (Sr., OL), Zavier LeClair (Sr., OL).
Newcomers include: Tanner Mele (Sr., OL/DL), Alex Fugate (Sr., OL/DL), Terry Amborski (Jr., OL/DL), Ross Bowman (Jr., OL), Ely McNeal (Sr., DB), Luke Borns (Jr., DB), Camden Rothe (Jr.,OL/LB), Will Glass (Jr., OL), Gavin Ahlers (Jr., OL), Luke Rammel (Soph., RB, LB), Caleb Schmidt (Soph., RB), Owen Ott (Fr., DL)
2023 schedule
(Kickoffs scheduled for 7 p.m.; subject to change)
Aug. 18 — at St. Henry
Aug. 25 — at Celina
Sept. 1 — Defiance
Sept. 8 — at Wapakoneta
Sept. 15 — at Ottawa-Glandorf
Sept. 22 — Van Wert
Sept. 29 — Shawnee
Oct. 6 — at Kenton
Oct. 13 — Elida
Oct. 20 — Bath
