It’s going to be an interesting year for the Strawberry Crest Chargers.
After losing much of their core to graduation, the Chargers are looking at a relatively inexperienced roster, including many players who have never played on the varsity level.
In addition, the team will add some personnel changes on both sides of the ball.
Joining head coach John Kelly on the sidelines this year will be offensive coordinator Ty Alvarez and defensive coordinator Carey McCray, who bring more than 32 years of coaching experience — 25 in the Tampa Bay area — to the table.
It was also time for some completely new schemes for both units. Other than the uniforms, this won’t look much like last year’s Chargers team.
TY ALVAREZ
Of the two coordinators, Alvarez comes with the deepest background in the Tampa Bay area. All of his 21 years have been spent here, and they’ve been spent in some of the best programs the state has to offer.
He got his start as the tight ends coach in 1993 at Jesuit High School; he worked under coach Dominick Ciao and remained there until Ciao’s retirement in 2002. After a year at Robinson High School, Alvarez joined coach Robert Weiner at Plant High School, where he worked with quarterbacks such as Robert Marve and Aaron Murray and saw three state championships in four years.
He returned to Jesuit, his alma mater, in 2010, and, in 2011, he became the offensive coordinator. After a year off, he went to Hillsborough High School to work as Earl Garcia’s passing game coordinator. Last year, he joined Armwood High School in the same role and helped get Sean Callahan’s team to the state finals.
“I’ve been able to see what it takes to win at the highest level,” Alvarez says. “I’m pretty good at judgment. There’s nobody else who can say they’ve worked for those four coaches. I’ve been very, very fortunate to be around those guys. Hopefully, we can do some of those things over at Strawberry Crest with coach Kelly.”
Alvarez says he didn’t leave Armwood with any ill will; he simply missed taking a more dominant role with the play-calling and saw an opportunity to help Crest’s offense succeed. He sees some of the tools in place already.
“We have a veteran quarterback who knows what he’s doing,” Alvarez says. “That’s part of the reason I came here. I have a lot of respect for Tristan (Hyde).”
Alvarez plans to run a multiple-formation offense to get as much out of his senior signal-caller as he can while keeping defenses on their toes.
“We’re going to run the football,” Alvarez says. “We’ve got to control the ball, move the sticks. I’m not going to say we’re a spread wide-open team; that’s not what we have.”
CAREY MCCRAY
On the other side of the ball, there’s Carey McCray.
Much of McCray’s past 11 years have been spent coaching defenses in the Tampa Bay area, including two years as Lakewood High School’s co-defensive coordinator and one as Clearwater High School’s linebackers coach. Before that, he worked at Waddell High School in North Carolina.
Last year, though, he served as Tampa Bay Tech’s running backs coach — a change of pace but nothing unfamiliar. McCray had coached some offenses before arriving in the Tampa Bay area but, as he says, that’s going “way back.”
“I really enjoyed coaching there,” he says. “I loved the staff; I loved the kids, but the opportunity to go over to SCHS and coach with coach Kelly and be a coordinator again was too good to pass up.”
So, he’s back on defense, which is his preference.
“I like to look at myself as just a football coach, but I definitely prefer defense,” McCray says. “I like the act of taking apart an offense. I actually love the violence of defense.”
“Violence” is actually not a bad description for what McCray wants to bring to the Chargers’ defense. Though much of the current roster lacks in game experience, it brings good athleticism, which McCray thinks can be used to the team’s advantage.
“We are very young and inexperienced, but we are very athletic, and we are going to play very fast,” he says. “What we lack in experience, we’ll make up for in aggression.”
As Alvarez is doing with the new offense, McCray is implementing a multiple-formation scheme into the defensive playbook.
“The system is designed around our kids’ athletic ability,” McCray says. “I don’t want to have any square pegs in round holes.”
He’ll be counting on his older players — safeties Josh Engram and Clay Cullins and linebacker Farron Rainford — to make the unit work. From what he’s seen so far, he’s confident in their abilities. It’s not the first time he’s worked with a relatively new school and an inexperienced group, but it could be the best time for him.
“I’ve been a part of a rebuilding project,” McCray says. “Waddell was a new school, like SCHS. But this group is different; they learn fast, and they’re hungry for success. The kids have been very responsive, and they’re picking up quickly.”
WHAT’S A MULTIPLE SCHEME?
It’s when an offense or defense switches its formation — they way they line up on the field — on the fly. This either confuses the opponent or allows the team to take advantage of a player mismatch, such as switching to have a 6-foot-3 wide receiver take on a 5-foot-9 cornerback. Or, on defense, it could mean predicting a pass-heavy attack and moving around to make it easier to cover that ground.
Have you ever played a Madden (or NCAA) football game, selected “choose plays by formation” and mixed things up? If so, then you’ve run a multiple-formation scheme before. Well, kind of.