By using their former experience, senior football players apply their knowledge toward creating an unbreakable bond and a powerhouse team. As of October 26, the team is second in the PIAA D1 6A rankings.
According to senior running back captain Ryan Sadowski, the team’s key to success has been being able to play unified as an 11-man team.
“There’s nothing not to love. I think that being with all the teammates is great, the camaraderie you get at football is the best part,” Sadowski said.
For senior wide receiver Danny Dyches, his key to success is “having confidence in yourself and knowing what you can do and not overthinking.”
“We’re all our own person and we all like to have our own goals set, so we encourage each other to just keep going and strive for greatness,” Dyches said.
According to head football coach Ed Gallagher, he believes the team is “in a good position to compete for our league championship.”
“We were very optimistic coming into the year because we returned a lot of our offensive and defensive linemen that have played for the past couple of years and they’ve gotten bigger and stronger over the years,” Gallagher said, “and we thought that usually when you have a veteran line level on both lines, you’re pretty competitive.”
Senior Griffin Ehret loves the bond he gets to form with his teammates because “it keeps me working hard and it’s something I can always be working at.”
“We’re honest with each other, we know when we make those mistakes and we’re always looking to make the people around us better,” Ehret said. “We know that we have a solid team but if we’re settling for where we’re at then we’re going to miss out on a lot…if we’re not pushing ourselves.”
According to captain Ben McMackin, “in some aspects of life when you work hard, you don’t always succeed, but in football if you work hard enough you will succeed eventually.”
“With the amount of seniors that we have, we have to create an environment of confidence where if you know the seniors are confident, we know that we’re gonna win,” McMackin said. “It rubs off on the rest of the team and you have a whole team that is super confident and that’s really hard. You’re going to win a lot of football games if your whole team is confident.”
Senior Rylan Zuk said his key to success is to “keep your head down and keep grinding and just never really take your foot off the gas and just keep going.”
“A lot of players, like our seniors, now have stepped up. I feel like we’re working harder than we did last year. And we have a bigger goal than last year and that’s to go undefeated and win a championship,” Zuk said.
Zuk has been inspired and grown throughout his kicking career by bonding with former kicker Ty Quintos, as well as looking up to NFL Ravens kicker Justin Tucker. “I really looked up to him and I just started kicking a football here and there. As I got closer to high school, I got really serious about it and quit soccer and just pursued kicking,” Zuk said.
Along with Zuk, Sadowski has also been influenced by previous Souderton football alumni.
“I would say the people around me on the team [inspired me]. I would [also] say Braden Porter inspired me because I have something to look at and records to beat,” Sadowski said.
