The Blitz Preseason Tour visits with GR Catholic Central head coach Todd Kolster

The Cougars have won 4 state titles in the last 5 years

Statechampionship trophy with awi noverFrankemunth, and as we continuein the firstweek of high school footballpractice, we'rejoined by Cougars head coach,ToddKolster...Coach, back atpractice ready for anew year kind of a shortturnaround with the weird seasona year ago.

What do youtake away from last year intothis year is itany diffeenrt than any normalseason foryou?

"Well it's been a littlebit different it has beena quick turnaround you don'tthink about it much, but itcertainly has gone qucik but ifyou're going to turn somethingaroundquick it's the sport offo otballand get backto practice so w elove that butI think youtake away a lot of great things,you know, just the maturity andgrowing up andhaving kids develop that I thinkthose arethe positives, you take awayfrom it.

Butcertainly, hopefully there'ssome carryovercuz yeah, it went pretty late sohopefullythere's some carryover from theguys."Coach I'm curious, and you haveabackground obviously playingcollege footballcoaching college football withthis jobyou've had a lot of successprogram wisewith four state championshipslastfive years, but that comes witha lot ofgood talent too, and they havefutures theywant to try to, you knowforesee, JalenMayfield now gonna plya in theNFL.

Howdo you balance that with yourcoachingstaff, with the kids where theyhave theirexpectations that you want tomanage andhelp them with, but also it'sthe team goalas well?

"I think it's reallysimple and the factthat I tell our guys I useexamples ofseasons that we've played reallylong andgone to a state finals, and towhen wve'e lostin the first round of theplayoffs and it'samazign how more of our guys getrecruited,when our teams play longer thanwhen theyplay shorter, and so it is theultimate teamgame that way, and you do haveto showup on Fridayi nghts andperformancemeans more than potential.

Andso Ithink that's the best thingabout the sportof football right now is, thisis the film is stillthe ultimate evaluator." Talkabout some of the new facesyou'reexpecting big things from, youlost somegreat seniors again Nick Hollernand JaceWilliams, or some guys that areexpectedto step in and maybe replacethose guys."One of the guys that is reallyunderrated butplayed a lot of football for usla styear is JohnPassinault, so he's anothersenior that'scoming back but John's kind of ado atall type of guy can playquarterback, played alot of slot receiver, playedfree safetie,lonsg napper, punt returner allthosethings so having him back is areally bigdeal but I think Jack Clafeta atinsidelinebacker, Jack's primed andready tohave a great year and lookingforward to that.Some of our guys inside.

I thinkNate VanTimmeran is a new face for ushe's goingto do some good things, you'vegot acouple sophomore linemen BrendanRoehr, Brendan Napieralski are acouple young guys that got sometime lastyear as freshmen, a lot ofinexperienceprobably some more athleticismin somespots." No doubt Grand RapidsCatholicCentral going to be the team tobeat indivision five they'll alsot ryto defend their OKGold conference championship.

Itallstart ats Michigan StadiumagainstLapeer.

Coming up tonight onFox 17 news at 10Zach Harih checking out anotherOK Goldschool he's visiting Gus KapolkaandCedar Springs, for now we'llsend it back tothe studio.