FOOTBALL FRIDAY: ACA rebuilding from the ground up

ACA’s AC Walters chases down Pike County’s Braylin Jackson during last year’s playoff game. (Tim Gayle)

By TIM GAYLE

Alabama Christian Academy coach Michael Summers is looking for a few good men.

Make that a lot of good men… good football players that is, to recreate his roster for the 2023 season.

Gone are familiar names such as Hayes Hunt at quarterback and Corey Landers and Osatowie Dion at running back. 

“To the naked eye, it’s going to look a little different,” Summers admitted. “We’ve known this was coming and we’ve prepared for that. We opened it up a lot last year. I’m not going to say we’re going to be one dimensional but when you graduate everything we graduated, you’re going to be different.”

Summers will work right up until the final week of the preseason on determining starters at some positions, particularly with some skill positions on offense because multiple people will rotate into the positions. 

“We’re going to have to have a quarterback that’s mobile,” he said. “What you saw at the St. James game last year (with tailback Corey Landers filling the position in an emergency role) is probably what you will see this year. 

“We’ve kind of challenged their mindset. We’ve challenged them to elevate the way they play, the way they compete.”

Offensive lineman Blake Shaw said there will be some obvious struggles in replacing experienced starters with inexperienced players, something that only time together will cure.

“We’ve got a different quarterback, we’ve got a different running back,” he said. “I feel like it’s chemistry and repetition -- getting to know the game, just learning how to play and have fun.”

Linebacker William Milner, who could line up at several positions on offense, said the Eagles are starting to come together after an offseason of hard work. 

“When we did our first 7-on-7, it was a little rough,” he said, “but the more we played together, we became more of a team, more of a family, so it’s looked a lot better.”

Defensively, the Eagles have a few less positions to fill. Safety AC Walters, Milner and Shaw return as starters. The good news is the front seven has some experience returning. Milner will be joined by Lane Smith, who was penciled in as a starting linebacker last year before suffering a season-ending knee injury over the summer. And Shaw is joined on the defensive front by nose guard Jalen Flowers and sophomore Christian Snipes, so most of the concerns surround the secondary.

The bad news is the Eagles surrendered an average of 26.9 points per game last season, one of the highest totals in school history.  

“We feel really good about our ability to run downhill, run laterally on defense,” Summers said. “I think we’ll be better on the defensive line than we were a year ago

“To be fair about our defensive struggles, the two games we struggled the most were Catholic and St. James. I don’t know too many defenses that didn’t struggle against those two teams.

The Eagles still have Trinity and defending state champion St. James as region rivals and will once again open the season against Catholic, but fortunately ACA is in a region with several rebuilding programs, offering them an opportunity to earn a spot in the playoffs. 

“We played six teams that were in the top 25 last year,” Summers said. “One guy can’t beat you, but at the same time we like this team. This group controls the things they can control. This group has played a lot together.”

Milner, like Summers, believes the Eagles’ hard work will help ACA surprise some people this fall.  

“Coach really put it into perspective that our year was coming and we’ve got to prepare for it,” he said. “We can’t just sit around, let the starters do whatever, so that’s what we’ve been doing. Even though a lot of our players have not been starting the last couple of years, all of us have been working hard every day to get to that point.”