The Blitz preseason tour visits with Unity Christian head coach Craig Tibbe

Not lose agame on the football field, butwe weredealing with a pandemic.

Thecrusaders had their season cometoanend abruptly, due ot thecrusaders had their season cometo an end abruptly, due to thepandemic and as we get rdeay togo though in a bnrad newseason 2021 We're joined by headcoachCraig Tibbie.

Coach, I just wantto ask youabout that.

What did that d otothis group asthey come back, do you think itplays a rolein any way?

"I do think it hadan impact on them.

Wedon't want to dwell on it butit's come up.

I've asked them acouple of times about some ofthat stuff and I think it kindof got themfocused.

This has been areallygoodoffseason for these kids andthis group isit's kind of pulled themtogether a little bit aswell.

O Syou never know how thatallplays out but it's fun to seekind of the unificationf, o hey,alright we had thatstopped.

Now let's let's go anddig in on thenext one you know it'd be readyfor that.

So itwas fun." Now the good news andJason talked about thisl al lastseason, it didn't stop you fromwinning the OK Blue DivisionChampionship you guys rolledthroughthere something you hadn't donebecauseyou were in tough divisions, Imean theOK Green for years with ByronCenter andZeeland East so that had to feelgood and that sets the stagenow.

What do you think of thisnew division for you guys?"It's exciting, new people, wearemeeting some new people, newcoaches.

We faced a lot of goodcoaches there as well but you'rein a rut a little bit seeing thesame people over and over, whichis okay butit's kind of fun to see some newpeople andnew teams and travel to newplaces.

If youlook at our, our career herasea footballprogram, we've been a lot ofdifferent pacleswe've played a olt of differentteams and sothis kind of added some new onesto usthat we hadn't faced much and sowe'relooking forward to another yearwith theBlue and I think it's going tobe prettygood." And we can't come seeit without talkingabout numbers, it's a goodsubject this year,the numbers are up again, howexciting isthat?

"Lats year we had ourbiggset team that wehad in a while at 30.

And nowwe're at 37for the varsity and this hasnever happened,year one we had 42 and then itwas thebottom dropped o.ut Going oneand 17doesn't do a whole lot for thatbut, we've gota group, a couple of groupsactually, juniorsd saneniors that have reallybought in they're excited aboutit and you never know.

Wewere talking about that earlierhow the cyclesgo, our jayvee came in with 12.So, whoknows what that'll mean for nextyear but he will enjoy this onewhile it's here and we'llworry about other stuff later."Two weeks from today they'llline them up forthe first time and it should bea greatgame.

OK Blue champs UnityChristian taking on OKSilverchampionHopkins on Friday, August 27th.Coming up tonight on Fox 17 newsat 10Zach Harig visiting with PatCollins in hisnew gig at West Ottawa for nowwe'regoing tso end it back to thestudio.