BROOKVILLE NEEDS TO REPLACE 20 STARTERS FROM LAST SEASON

BROOKVILLE – It will be a whole new ball game for the Brookville Raider football team this season.

Gone from last year’s 8-2 team are nine starters on offense and all 11 on defense.

"We are inexperienced and young overall," ninth-year head coach Chris Dworek said. "We lost 20 seniors from last year’s team. But we have some excellent talent returning and some good, hard workers and talented players coming from the junior varsity and junior high teams. I feel we will be very competitive based on our athleticism and returning leaders."

One player the Raiders won’t have to replace this season is quarterback Nick Heschke.

As a junior last season, Heschke accounted for 1,092 of the Raiders 2,233 total yards of offense or 48.9 percent. He was 58-for-118 passing for 833 yards, six touchdowns and four interceptions and ran 71 times for 259 yards and five more scores. He threw for the 12^th most yards in District 9 last year.

Heschke’s favorite targets this year could include fellow seniors Matt Mohney, who caught two passes for 12 yard a year ago, and Josh Keihl.

Junior Silas Wonderling will be expected to carry a bulk of the load rushing for Brookville after seeing very limited action last season carrying the ball once for two yards.

Fellow juniors Matt Berfield and Travis Diener will join Wonderling in the backfield. Berfield had four carries for 10 yards last season.

Key linemen for the Raiders will include senior Wes Bashline, the only other returning starter, sophomore Eli Morres and senior Dave Galbraith.

The strength of last year’s team was the defense which allowed just 15.4 ppg a year ago while helping the Raiders win five games decided by four points or less and six decided by a touchdown or less. But with all the starters gone from that unit, the defense remains a question mark.