Loch Raven football coach Jeramiah Bowling hopes that speed is more important than size when it comes to winning football games, because the Raiders have plenty of the former and not enough of the latter.
"We have a lot of guys who are multi-sport athletes, especially a lot of track athletes," said Bowling, a second-year coach. "When we ran our combine, we had a lot of guys run in the 4.4s (in the 40-yard dash)."
Bowling wants to see all that speed translate to improving last year's 3-7 record for a squad sharply focused on earning a postseason bid for the first time since 2005.
"A playoff berth would be a good season," he explained. "We have had winning teams here, but there has been a lot of turnover in the last 10 years. We are trying to change the culture, and establish a winning tradition."
Bowling feels a stronger running game could give the offense a boost.
The backfield is deep and talented with juniors Lamonte Brown (5-feet, 10 inches, 187 pounds), Adrien Hayes (5-10, 200) and senior Kevin Maultsby.
"We are going to use running back by committee," Bowling said. "We have three good backs that can turn something out of nothing. They have good vision. They are able to make a cut when they need to. The type of system that we run is based on how they see their cutback lanes open up."
Juniors Tariq Davis (6-3, 150) and Eric Sparaco (6-0, 185) are vying for the starting quarterback job to run the spread offense.
It will be difficult to replace last year's starter, Montrae Martin, who graduated.
He's one of the best male athletes to come through Loch Raven in recent years, having won a state championship in the triple jump and regional title in the 110 hurdles last spring and a county title in the 110 hurdles last winter.
"We were lucky to have him," Bowling said. "He was a really good running quarterback. We will lose that dynamic."
Davis started on the JV last year.
"He leads by example and that's the number one thing I am looking for in a quarterback," Bowling said.
Junior center Keyon Asgari (6-1, 280), sophomore guard/tackle Dan Dobbs (5-11, 230) and sophomore Ricardo Cazares (5-9, 245) spearhead a line that will be blocking the quarterback.
Three wide receivers — sophomore Josh Harrison (6-0, 170) and seniors Parrish Overby (5-10, 150) and Quion Dandridge (5-7, 145) — will be the main targets.
An improved defense, which is lead by Harrison, a linebacker, Parrish, a safety, and another linebacker Hayes, could help the Raiders move closer to their goal.
They gave up a whopping 252 points in 10 games last year.
"We definitely lost some key players on defense," said Bowling, who served as head coach at Concordia Prep for two years before Loch Raven. "We ran a lot of cover-2 last year. We are making a change to running more cover-1 and cover-3 to give us additional run support."