News Photo by James Andersen Alpena’s Joe Schuch catches a pass during a receiving drill on Thursday at Alpena High School.

ALPENA — The Alpena High School football team is leaning heavily into experience this season and so far things seem to be going good.

With more than a dozen seniors on the roster, the Wildcats hit the ground running when practice officially began on Monday and both coaches and players say things have been smooth.

“We’re loving it,” Alpena coach Eric Mitchell said. “We’re way ahead of where we were a year ago and we did kind of expect that, but I didn’t expect it to go as smooth as it has. That’s been a huge benefit from camp so far.”

As Alpena looks to bounce back from last season’s 1-8 campaign, they’re counting on last season’s struggles to pave the way for more success in 2023. In the midst of their hard work last season, injuries hit the Wildcats hard last season, putting players in unfamiliar positions to help fill out the lineup.

Now the Wildcats are healthy, more experienced, eager, excited and ready to keep moving forward.

“We’re pretty exhausted, but I think overall we’re looking far ahead of where we were last year,” Alpena senior John Kurowski said. As a senior coming back, the game’s moving slower, I’m getting things (easier). I think everyone’s feeling that.

It makes it extremely easy (being experienced) because you go in knowing things and coaches don’t need to stop to correct you. If everyone’s on the same page, we can get in more complicated concepts and be able to move along faster.”

For Mitchell, Kurowski and others, the arrival of the official start of the first week of practice is an exciting time, especially this season.

“I’ve been looking forward to it ever since the end of track (season),” Kurowski said. “I was personally excited. I was disappointed with last year and I was excited to get ready to have a better season.”

Mitchell and his assistants spent time before the season planning the first week of practice, not only planning out drills, but making sure each drill every day aligns with the goals for a particular day.

“We’re just continuously going forward,” Mitchell said. “My wife and I talk about it all the time, it’s like I’m a kid on Christmas, right? The night before I can’t sleep, I’m excited and I’m ready to rock and roll. Monday, we started at nine, I was here at 6:30.”

Scrimmages and joint practices are still to come next week and games will follow the week after. But for now, the Wildcats are enthused to be back out on the field, focused on staying healthy and building team chemistry as the season gets closer.

“We’re healthy. Yeah, it’s football; we’re a little banged up, but really nothing more than bumps and bruises and just being sore. There’s none of the plaguing injuries,” Mitchell said.

We have 20 or 21 seniors, we’re very senior-heavy. These guys…they took it seriously last year, but they were young and we got beat up throughout the year.”