PREVIEW: Gritty Raiders Hope to Have Smoother Ride This Year After Persevering Last Season Through Rash of Injuries

BROOKVILLE, Pa. (EYT/D9) — It was a nightmare scenario.

Five weeks into the 2022 season, the Brookville football team was 1-4 and down to their third quarterback — who hadn’t even played the position before.

(Pictured above, from left: Logan Loy, Jacob Clinger, Jack Knapp, Dan Drake and Charlie Krug)

First, junior Charlie Krug was lost for the season in the opener. The QB tried to play with a torn ACL suffered during the summer in a 7-on-7 scrimmage, but the knee didn’t hold up.

Then sophomore backup Easton Belfiore suffered a season-ending injury in Week 4.

Senior Noah Peterson stepped into the breach. The offense, usually high-flying and up-tempo out of a spread formation, was scrapped for a ball-control, grind-it-out style behind bruising running back Jackson Zimmerman.

That forgettable first half suddenly turned into a memorable second half.

Brookville Area High School sports coverage on Explore and D9Sports.com is brought to you by Redbank Chevrolet and DuBrook.

A win at home over St. Marys. A rout of Bradford. A rousing 34-7 road win over Karns City, then another rout over Bellefonte a week after a close loss to Punxsutawney.

That 1-4 start had become a 5-5 record and a playoff berth.

Brookville beat Karns City again, this time 31-7, to reach the District 9 Class 2A championship game against Central Clarion. Although the Raiders lost that game, the season was considered a success because of what they were able to overcome.

“We had to change things on the fly when we had so many injuries early in the year last year,” said first-year Brookville coach Gabe Bowley, who has served under retired coach Scott Park as an assistant for six seasons. “They learned to fight and learned to battle. They won through that transition and they put a lot of hard work in during the offseason.”

But 16 seniors from that team are gone, including several key ones. Six starters return on offense and defense.

Krug is back, healthy and stronger than ever.

“Krug has dedicated himself this offseason to rehabbing his injury and weight training himself into what I believe is going to be the best version of Charlie we’ve ever seen,” Bowley said. “He is hungry and is eager to prove what he is capable of to himself, his teammates, and the rest of District 9.”

The offense will revert back to the one Krug ran with precision when he was healthy as a sophomore. That season, Krug threw for 2,009 yards and 23 touchdowns.

He loses dangerous receiver Brayden Kunselman, who placed in the 100-meter dash at the state track meet as a senior this spring and who caught 63 passes for 741 yards and nine TDs last fall despite the injury upheaval.

Krug does have promising sophomore Hayden Freeman and Belfiore to throw to this year and three starters back up front to protect him.

“I think we’re ready,” Bowley said. “We’ve had a lot of O-line turnout in the weight room, which is great to see. And our skill guys have been working hard in the 7-on-7 practices. We’re just getting that timing down and just working on consistency between them.”

While the offense will look more like the one from 2021 than the one that churned out yards on the ground in the later half of 2022, it will be more of a hybrid.

Krug will still put the ball in the air. But now the Raiders have shown they can maul teams with a punishing ground game if they must.

“We’re going back to what Charlie did. I mean, that’s the idea of what we want to do here,” Bowley said. “Although now we do have an identity, at least in the back of our mind, of running between the tackles. I think you’re going to see a little bit of a blend from the spread, spreading teams out, throwing the ball, but also running the ball. That’s important.”

The big question is who will run the ball now that Zimmerman and his 1,125 yards and 15 TDs has graduated.

There are plenty of candidates.

“We lost some pretty important guys — some stat-grabbers,” Bowley said. “But we didn’t lose all our skill. We didn’t lose all our talent. We lost some key pieces, but we also had some key pieces that we’re getting ready to move up into those positions. A lot of those injuries were to underclassmen and we had to have seniors step up, which was great for that senior class, but at the same time, the group that we have is ready to go.”

The defense will also be bolstered by the return of Krug and Belfiore, who are also a standout linebackers.

That unit had a big part in the Raiders’ second-half success, giving up just 33 points in five wins.

This year will also have a challenge for Brookville to tackle.

Because of a delay in the installation of turf at the high school field, the Raiders will only have three home games in 2023: Aug. 25 vs. Central Clarion, Sept. 8 vs. Keystone and Sept. 22 vs. DuBois on homecoming.

Brookville’s final five games are on the road.

“They’re gonna put our field under construction and we’ll be away the entire second half,” Bowley said. “The turf was supposed to start in June but it didn’t work out. This way we get to salvage half our season at home.”

Brookville Area High School sports coverage on Explore and D9Sports.com is brought to you by Redbank Chevrolet and DuBrook.