Delhi leaning on defense, junior class to be competitive in Southern League.

With any luck last year the Delhi High football team would have made the postseason.

Three of the Hawks’ losses were by a combined six points, including two one-point defeats to Waterford and Le Grand in the middle of the season. As a result, Delhi finished with a 4-6 record and missed the playoffs.

“We ran into Fremont from Oakland last year and a lot of our kids took a beating in that game,” said Delhi coach Rod McCombs. “We had kids coming out of that game. We felt we were in every game. He had a lead against Waterford and they came back to beat us late. We lost a close game at Le Grand.”

The Hawks graduated a lot of players from last year’s squad. They’ll be counting heavily on their junior class this season as they hope to compete in a wide open Southern League.

“One of our issues this year has been consistency,” McCombs said. “We’ve had a problem with attendance at practice. We’ve had days where we only had 11 or 12 kids show up during the summer. Being able to have committment consistently from this group will be key.”

The number of kids every day has grown to about 20 more since the first official day of practice. Leading the way for the Hawks has been junior Johan Larios.

Larios played in all 10 games as a sophomore last season, rushing for 126 yards and a touchdown. He’s been the tone setter during the offseason as one of the few players that saw extensive playing time last year.

“The juniors have had to step up and show leadership,” Larios said. “We’ve had to show everybody how to go hard every day. It’s going to be a a little different this year. We’re low on numbers. We have to find the right position for everybody so we can help the team win.”

Larios appears to be first in line to get the bulk of the carries. He’s put in the work to earn the role.

“Johan has been our number one weight room guy,” McCombs said. “He’s only 160 pounds. We have a few guys who are 250 pounds and he’s outlifting all of them. We do some athletic tests throughout the year and Johan has been our number one athlete all summer long.”

Alex Correa also returns and will be a featured ball carrier in the Hawk’s double-wing, run-heavy offense. Correa also played up on varsity last year as a sophomore until a broken clavicle ended his season after just four games.

The game plan this season for Delhi will be to shorten the game with its ball-control offense and play good defense.

“What I do like is they are buying into our defensive philosphies,” McCombs said. “We’re really pushing that our defense will be our focus. One thing they do is listen and they do execute what we ask them to execute.”

“Our defense is aggressive,” Larios said. “We have some of our best athletes playing mostly on defense.”

McCombs hopes his team can put themselves in the same type of situations to win games this season.

“This year we’re really light on numbers and we have some inexperience up front,” he said. “Our expectations are to be competitive every Friday night. We want to be a worthy opponent no matter who we play.”