HOLLY POND, Ala. – Football season is approaching once again, and the Holly Pond Broncos have been preparing all summer to get back on the field and build on a solid 2024 season. The Broncos will have experience returning on both sides of the ball and Head Coach Will McDaniel is looking forward to watching this team develop after a very productive offseason.
“We probably have seven or eight different guys that start on either side of the ball returning. We lost a big senior group, but we played a lot of young guys at times last year. We’ll have a ninth-grade quarterback, and he started a game at safety last year as an eighth grader, so he has a little bit of game experience,” McDaniel said. “We’ve got six seniors this year and five of them have a ton of game experience over their careers so we’re not as senior led as we were last year but we’ve got a lot of good youth coming up and those guys have put in a lot of work this summer at playdates and 7-on-7 competitions and OTAs and all those things we’ve done over the last couple weeks.”
McDaniel and his staff didn’t have much time for installation before kicking things off last season, but they’ve had a full offseason to prepare this time around and they’ve been working on ways to put their players in good situations.
“We are a lot further along right now than we were 365 days ago. I got hired in the middle of June last year, so we didn’t really get to install anything last year until July. Then we were able to go out and score 324 points last season which is the second most in school history and that was really with us basically starting in July. So, I think we’re a lot further along,” McDaniel said. “That doesn’t mean we’ll replicate 324 points but we’re able to do a lot more right now even with a ninth grader at quarterback and with skill guys that we’ve replaced just from being in the system for a year. It’d be nice to run for about 300 yards per game this year instead of 275. That would help him out a lot but we’re going to try to put him in positions to have the best chance of success and not put the game on his back.”
Holly Pond put together an explosive season offensively in 2024 but with a new quarterback set to take the reins and some new faces at the skill positions, McDaniel is eager to see how some new players step into those roles.
“We replace Sawyer Olinger who was our do everything quarterback last year. He accounted for 180 of those 324 points last year so obviously you have to replace guys like him and we’re not going to ask our ninth-grade quarterback to account for those types of numbers. We lost Brody Howard and Zayne Faulkner in the backfield as well so we’re having to replace most all of our backfield outside of Boston Gibbs. He was a 1,000-yard rusher and accounted for 100 points and he’s back but most all of our offensive skill positions we’ll be replacing.”
Holly Pond will have some familiar faces with game experience returning on the defensive side of the ball and after a summer full of competition, McDaniel is excited to see how they fair under the lights this season.
“Defensively we played a lot more bodies throughout the year. So, we played a ton of people defensively all the way through so we probably have more experience on that side of the ball even though some of them will probably play some different spots than they did last year,” McDaniel said. “So, thankfully with all the things we do in the summer with competitions, you get to throw people out there in 7-on-7 or 11-on-11 situations and see what happens. Even though it’s not padded football, you get to see how they react to the heat and the competition.”
2025 Holly Pond Football Schedule (3A, Region 8)
Aug. 22 – at Appalachian
Aug. 29 – at Hanceville
Sept. 5 – Sylvania*
Sept. 12 – at Brindlee Mountain*
Sept. 19 – Geraldine*
Oct. 3 – at Whitesburg Christian*
Oct. 9 – Asbury*
Oct. 17 – Fyffe*
Oct. 24 – at Collinsville*
Oct. 31 – Cleveland
*Region Game
Check out The Cullman Tribune’s Football Fanatics preseason magazine when it becomes available for more on the Broncos and all our local teams including band and cheerleaders.
