Aug 22, 2018 4 min read

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In Jefferson-Morgan’s first seven games last season, the Rockets allowed fewer than 20 points five times.

They won three of those games, allowing six, 14 and six points, respectively.

That’s the type of defense head coach Aaron Giorgi expects. Not the defense that allowed 146 points in J-M’s last three games.

Though those games were against the three best teams in the conference – California, Carmichaels and Fort Cherry – Giorgi said that with J-M’s history of being a defensive-minded team he doesn’t want to see an end to a season like that again.

“As long as I’ve been here, and in year’s past, Jefferson-Morgan took pride in being a physical, defensive team,” he said. “We expect big things out of our defense.”

With the Rockets losing nine players from last year, Giorgi said having a productive summer with the young team would be important.

“This summer session has been the best summer session we’ve had since in my four years as head coach,” he said. “I’m not diminishing any athletic prowess past groups had. This group of kids showed up every day. I have 30 kids on the roster, and I have 25 showing up on a daily basis.”

Giorgi said the Rockets’ offense last season was often stagnant and inconsistent. He thinks the team had an opportunity to win a few more games but the offense wasn’t able to put a scoring drive together in a big situation.

“I feel like we didn’t have a good rhythm all year and we made a lot of mistakes in games that dictated the ending of them, like fumbles, penalties and dropped passes,” Giorgi said. “We left some wins on the table.”

J-M’s two best skill-position players, DL Garrett and Colten Davidson, graduated. Garrett scored nine touchdowns and totaled 500 yards, most of which through the air, and Davidson ran for 739 yards and nine touchdowns.

“As far as DL and Colt go, they were our home-run threats,” Giorgi said. “This year, we might not have that dynamic player that DL and Colt have been, but we have a lot of young athletes who can contribute.”

Giorgi projects sophomore Jonathan Wolfe, who started at middle linebacker as a freshman last season, to take over the main running back duties for Davidson.

“He’s a horse,” Giorgi said. “He works out twice a day. He works hard and he’s becoming a leader. We expect big things from him. We put him into the fire last year at middle linebacker, which is a hard position to play as a freshman, but he stepped up.”

Senior Justin Maddich will step in for Garrett as a wide receiver and flex back.

“He got overshadowed with DL and Colt the last couple of years but he’s a talented pass-catcher and has speed,” Giorgi said. “He sees the opportunity to step up and be the man and he definitely wants it.”

The Rockets return senior quarterback Jacob Broadwater, who passed for 600 yards and eight touchdowns. Giorgi expects Broadwater to be the starter, but he said there’s a possibility of moving Broadwater to running back to get him the ball more often and starting freshman Colt Fowler at quarterback.

“(Fowler) is very young, but he’s an athletic kid,” Giorgi said. “He works hard and he gets better every single day. If we need another running back, I could see moving Jacob to running back and putting Colt in at quarterback.”

The Rockets begin their season with a nonconference matchup against Waynesburg Aug. 24. The biggest difference in J-M’s schedule is the absence of its biggest and oldest rival: Carmichaels. The Mikes were reclassified to Class AA for this season and the storied rivalry with Jefferson-Morgan will be put on hiatus.

“I’m upset that we probably don’t get to play Carmichaels for the next couple of years,” Giorgi said. “I know the WPIAL crossed Carmichaels with a Class A school (Union). I wish they would have taken into consideration what it would’ve meant for us to play each other. If you’re going to cross a team from Class A to Class AA, it would’ve been nice if that was us.”

With one of the better teams leaving the Tri-County South Conference, and the addition of former Class AA schools Bentworth and Chartiers-Houston, Giorgi expects the conference to be competitive, excluding defending conference champion California.

“California is in a class of its own right now with the student-athletes that they have coming back from last season,” Giorgi said. “Outside of them, I think it’s going to be a very competitive conference this year. I think most of the teams are on the same level.”