Depew Football Looks To Continue Winning Tradition

The Depew High School football program doesn’t experience losing seasons very often but that’s what happened last year. Despite being competitive every step of the way, the Wildcats finished at 3-6, the program’s first losing season since 2005.

But that doesn’t change anything as far as the Wildcats are concerned. Depew remains one of the elite small school programs in Western New York and this year’s club expects to be right back in the hunt.

“Depew has a tradition of winning,” senior quarterback Jon Wolf said. “We just want to get back to that. We’re excited for this season. I can’t wait to get going; this team looks real good.”

The Wildcats have some strong weapons back and expect to return to the championship race. And they’ll find out right away how reasonable those expectations are for this season. The season opener is on Friday, Sept. 2 at rival Alden, a game that annually has championship and playoff impactions on the line – no matter how early or late that matchup may be.

“Right off the bat, we open with Alden so we’re going to have to be ready right from the get go,” Depew coach Brian Wilson said. “That’s always a big one so we’ll have to be good to go.”

Depew seems to have the talent to return to contention in 2016. Wolf is back under center after taking over for the injured Ryan Guay for the final two regular season games and postseason. He’ll have a strong wide receiver corps at his disposal, including junior Chad Biersbach, the face of the basketball team, and senior Brendan Hejmanowski.

The Wildcats have traditionally had a stud running back ready to carry the load. This season, with a number of solid backs, Depew is ready to be relying on more of a committee approach, but Wilson added that “if someone steps up and takes control, then we’ll see.”

For now, though, the Wildcats are looking at a group effort carrying the rock. Depew will mean on a strong group of runners that includes Austin Pilley, Cam Miller, Jeremy Clark, Jacob Mlodozeniec and others.

“We’ve had a workhorse the last few years,” Wilson said. “But this year, we’re going to ask those guys to play a lot of football on both sides of the ball, so we’ll wait and see. I think we’ll be OK to do it that way. That’s kind of the move in football now anyway. I think the days of the 30-carry (per game) back are gone.”

As usual, Depew has some strong boys up front, led by and Jon Lietus and Tyler Biersbach. They’re expected to lead the line. Defensively, the Wildcats are expecting to be lead by a strong linebacking corps that includes seniors Ryan Martin and Cameron Miller.