HSFT19 Stop #24 — Sulligent Blue Devils

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SULLIGENT, Al. (WCBI) — The Sulligent Blue Devils are ready for redemption.

It was only two seasons ago that the Blue Devils fell just short of a state title. After losing an experienced bunch and being plagued by the injury bug, Sulligent found it hard to meet expectation.

With a whole new group of seniors, the Blue Devils are ready once again to get back to work.

“It’s been surprisingly different and better than I thought it was going to be,” Sulligent head coach Daniel Merchant said. “They’ve really worked hard from when we got done in November until now. So I’ve been pleased with their attitudes.”

“We take a lot more responsibility as a team,” senior OL/MLB Morgan Reese said. “We’re a lot better at taking responsibility for each other and for the team as a whole. I think we’ll go a lot farther than we did last year.”

“We have a lot more experience this year than we did last year,” senior OL/DL Austin Jaen said.  “Last year, it was all kind of new. We had just moved up. So this year we know what it takes to win and we don’t want the bitter taste of losing in our mouth.”

The restoration process for Sulligent is in full effect. Seven starters return on each side of the ball for the Blue Devils.

The team says that the biggest factor that will separate this year’s team from last is a presence of new leadership.

“Well, if you get everybody ready for the game and all hyped up then they’re going to play well,” Jaen said. “If you make them think they’re good enough to win that game then they’re going to play good enough to win that game.”

“Everybody gets along and we’re all communicating,” senior WR/S Jaquan Ollie said. “We’re always on each other’s back and helping each other out and picking each other up.”

“They’ve done a good job this spring. Leadership was really good this spring and we had a good showing in our spring game,” Merchant said.

The Blue Devils have been holding their heads up high with help from Merchant’s continuous motivation.

“Just try to get better each day. We focus on Sulligent. We don’t focus on our opponent we just focus on ourselves and try to get better each and every day. Of course, we watch film and try to see what mistakes we’ve made and just get better from there,” Merchant said.

“He just always stays on our back and just lets us know were not going to have a season like that again,” Ollie said.

“Waking us up at six a.m. to come here and workout for about two hours to get ready for this season and make us strong,” Jaen said.

Sulligent has been hard at summer workouts all in hopes of setting a tone on that very first Friday night.

“Setting our point. Showing we can do and be more capable of what we can do than last year. Show that if we put our mind to it we can do it as a team,” Ollie said.

“We had a bad year last year, but that’s in the past and they don’t know whats going to hit them this year,” Jaen said.

A new season begins for Sulligent when they have their first match-up against Berry Fayette on August 23rd.