Oakmont starting from scratch with new head coach

Coaching football is not easy. Being a first-year varsity coach at a small school is even harder. Cory Wilson has a small team of around 40 players and of those 40, there are only 11 returning senior players. Wilson is basically starting from ground zero. A season ago on a senior-laden team, Oakmont put together a winning season, as the varsity team went 8-4 and won a playoff game, this coming after a zero win season in 2023 and 2-8 season in 2022. The good news is Wilson inherits around 30 players from a junior varsity team that went 7-2-1 a year ago. Still, there is a huge difference between the junior varsity and varsity levels. Experience and depth are two things that Wilson doesn't have. He has 11 returning seniors and not all of them were big-name players from a year. Along the same lines, not every player up from the junior varsity team was starters either. On top of that, this group has to get used to the speed of the varsity game, which is will an adjustment. One of the very few returning starters from a season ago is senior inside linebacker Tyler Shade. "This year's a lot different than last year," Shade said. "We lost a lot of good seniors. We've got a lot of junior varsity players coming up. We've got a lot of good kids and we've got a lot of kids that don't know what they're doing. It's a good experience for all of them, though. I'm out here trying to show them what the varsity level is all about. It inspiring to me to be out here trying to show them what varsity football is all about." Wilson said he has two goals for the team. One is to have a team GPA of 3.0, the second is a league championship. "My first goal is always to have a team G.P. A. of 3.0," Wilson said. "The best ability is availability. Number two is I'd really like to win a league title. Being a first-year head coach and being able to hang a banner and to build on to the winning culture that we had last year would be a huge achievement."