Tipping the Scales

CHARLO — Talk with your pads.

It’s the mantra that Charlo football coach Mike Krahn drills into his players, and his undersized line has bought in wholeheartedly.

Week in and week out, Trinceton Brown, Ryan Fullerton and Maverick Nelson and the Charlo linemen crunch pads in the trenches while the Vikings’ skill players scamper by and, often as not this season, find the end zone.

The position, by its very nature, is a thankless one, and it can be frustrating hitting the same guys over and over again.

Talk with your pads.

“I try to take that to heart,” Brown said. “It’s frustrating, and sometimes you want to talk, but you’ve just got to channel it in the game.”

Brown and the Vikings line have had to “channel it” all season against larger opponents, but their jobs have gotten even tougher during the playoff run.

Fullerton, listed at 5-11, 165 pounds, and Brown at 6-1, 170 would be linebackers or safeties on most high school football teams in the country, but at Charlo they take a three-point stance on the line of scrimmage opposite lines like last week’s opponent, Culbertson-Bainville, whose smallest starting lineman weighed in at 260.

And the Vikings rushed for 189 yards.

“I’d like to say I’m surprised, but I’m not because I coach the line so I take a lot of pride in these guys,” said Charlo coach Mike Krahn.

It’s pretty easy to stay pumped up when your offense is as explosive as the Vikings’ attack has been this year.

“It’s exciting to make a block and see them go by and they’re gone,” Fullerton, a senior who starts at center and nose guard said. “We’re moving the ball and it’s because you made the block. It’s pretty cool.”

Nelson, the Vikings’ biggest player at 225 pounds, has gained a reputation for sealing off an edge to allow the speedy backfield through. The junior said he draws off the physicality of running backs Tyler Delaney and Jacen Petersen, both known to run over a defender or two en route to the end zone.

“All of them are fast and they get physical,” Nelson said. “We’re just down there hooting and hollering and waiting for the next play to come by so we can score another.”

Brown agrees.

“We’re really lucky to have the people in the backfield that we do,” the senior said. “They do half our jobs. They do a really good job of reading us and making the cut.”

The past few weeks on defense, facing slower personnel than the typical Western C 8-man squads feature, Krahn has been able to stack more of the Charlo defense in the box. Brown said the line appreciates the help.

“We did some double-teaming and stuff,” Brown said. “On defense, we had a pretty good idea of where they were coming from so all we needed to do was stop them. It kind of was nice having people filling in behind.”

They have also implemented some different looks on defense during the playoff push to keep opponents off balance.

“We’ve had that stuff all year, we just haven’t really used it until now,” Fullerton said. “We were kind of saving it. It’s fun to do a little twisting and a little blitzing.”

Culbertson-Bainville’s big line was a good prep for this week’s opponent—undefeated Ennis—that features senior linemen Derek Wham (6-1, 270) and Braydon McKiltrick (6-5, 255), but the Vikings’ line is looking forward to another challenge.

“They’ve got some big linemen on them,” Nelson said. “We’ve got to break through them, too, and do something on those slow guys that will make their quarterback scramble.”

Krahn expects his team’s speed to carry an advantage.

“We work on getting low and when you’ve got big boys like that, they’ve got size, but we’ve got speed and built-in leverage,” he said.

It doesn’t seem to matter who’s on the other side of the ball anymore, as long as they get to play.

As long as they get to talk with their pads another week.