It’s more than touchdowns and points for Rider under the Friday Night Lights.
You may be familiar with the names Kenji Johnson and Joe Castles who pass the ball and run in touchdowns, but the offensive line opens up lanes and protects the star players from getting hurt.
“This group is pretty special, each group is different, each group year in and year out is special,” offensive line coach Clint Nabors said. “But these guys just kind of formed a bond together because there were new pieces from last year to this year. They kind of just fell right in, and that’s the great thing about offensive linemen.”
The offensive line has four starting seniors this year: Cape Johnson, Norman Mendieta, Gideon Perez and Isay Saldana plus junior Logan Brake. Three of the five offensive linemen started last year.
Johnson is a right tackle, while Mendieta is a left tackle. Both Johnson and Mendieta have played their positions for a while now. Not only do they put hard work into their position, they help the new players to understand the plays.
“They’re just constantly communicating with them and talking to them at practice, and I think those younger guys get to see these older guys’ work ethic,” Nabors said. “How they are supposed to practice and the effort they practice with. I think that helps a lot, too.”
The team’s success comes with a lot of work ethic and many drills. Whether it’s wins or losses, the boys pick up their heads and move on into the next game.
But the most important part is whenever the boys have confidence in and work on themselves, it also helps to improve the offensive line as a whole.
“Every day at practice the combos, the double teams and all the little drills really make up for it and show out in the game,” Mendieta said. “Everybody’s really has got grit to them, everybody’s got mean and everybody got a little bit of dawg in them. So I think that’s helped a lot.”
The offense is averaging 39 points and 222 rushing yards a game as they’ve built an identity as a running team. Johnson is one of the area’s leading rushers with more than 1,300 yards and 14 touchdowns.
“We are really a scrapy group, we’re not super big, but we really get after it especially during tight games. That’s when we do the best,” Johnson said.
Although the players have made many memories while playing Rider football, both Johnson and Miendieta said their favorite memory was two weeks ago winning the district championship and blowing out Lubbock. Johnson said some players got to wear the coaches’ headsets on after they’d played.
Meanwhile, Nabors said he hasn’t had a favorite memory yet and he is ready to see what the rest of the season brings. The Raiders will play Lake Dallas in the second round of the playoffs at 7 p.m. Friday in Mineral Wells.
“You know I’ve been telling these guys we got six weeks left to do it,” Nabors said. “We want to go win the whole thing, and I think we have the opportunity to do that if we’ll focus on ourselves each week and go play to get better and we’ll see what happens.”
