St. Thomas Aquinas High School head football coach Mike Thomas doesn’t have to worry about Gardner-Edgerton star Bubba Starling anymore in district play.
Starling, a standout quarterback who signed at the University of Nebraska, left the program during preseason drills after he was tendered a $7.5M signing bonus to play Major League Baseball in the Kansas City Royals organization.
It could open the door for the Saints to make a return to the Class 5A state playoffs after a one-year hiatus.
In 2009, Aquinas, which finished 10-2, losing both of its games to Gardner-Edgerton, an Eastern Kansas League foe, was denied a berth in the state title game after losing to the Starling-led Trailblazers in a state semifinal playoff game.
Last season, Starling also threw a wrench in the Saints’ works during district play in 2010, one game after they lost to powerhouse Blue Valley.
“We can’t get away from them,” Thomas said of Gardner-Edgerton and Blue Valley. The other team in the Saints’ district is Pittsburg, the mecca of Southeast Kansas.
“I’m not real sad that (Bubba) has graduated, let’s put it that way,” Thomas said. “He was the real deal and I have nothing but praise for him.
“The thing I thought that he did best was he made the other players around him better and made his teammates play better than what they normally could do.”
• FLASHBACK
When Aquinas hosts Great Bend tonight at 7 in Overland Park, it will be a rematch of last year’s season-opener. Aquinas rolled to a 52-28 victory at Memorial Stadium, a game where the two teams combined for five touchdowns in the final two minutes, 53 seconds of the second quarter.
Graduated running back Andrew Gittemeier had 295 all-purpose yards — 172 rushing and 39 receiving — and scored four touchdowns to lead the Saints in that game.
“I think we kind of surprised them last year,” Thomas said of Great Bend. “It’s going to be interesting and we have our work cut out for us.”
Gittemeier was subbing for Nebraska commitment Dagan Reed, who was serving a one-game suspension for a violation of team rules, one of five Aquinas players that sat out that game. Reed’s scholarship was later renounced, and he now is at Coffeyville Community College.
Quarterback Richard Davila threw for 240 yards and four touchdowns in that game, completing 12 of 19 passes. He also graduated and is a redshirt freshman at the University of Central Missouri.
• NEW NAMES
Paul Heit (6-foot-1, 168-pound, senior) takes over at quarterback for the Saints.
“He played for us a little bit last year at quarterback,” Thomas said. “Most of the time it was cleanup time, but there was a couple times he went in when Richard wasn’t doing very much.
“I want to try to get as many young kids playing on the varsity level, so they can get used to the speed and everything that’s on there.”
Thomas has a three-headed monster at the running backs position.
“We have three kids that will all get time at running back and they’re all a little bit different,” he said. “We have one in Nick Williams (5-7, 157, junior) and I would characterize him as a little water bug. He’s just going to scoot all over the place and he’s got good speed and he’s going to make things happen.
“When he’s not at running back, we’ll move him to the outside and try to pass it to him. We have another kid who played mostly JV because we really didn’t need him at running back last year.”
Thomas was referring to Luke Martinez (6-1, 188, senior).
“He reminds me a lot of Dagan Reed,” Thomas said of Martinez. “He’s probably not as good as Reed, but he’s the same kind of runner. He will run over you or he’ll juke you and run around you.
“He has good size and good speed. He can run a legitimate 4.7 (second in the 40-yard dash). It’ll be interesting how he does.”
The third guy is a Erik Benson (5-8, 163, senior).
“If we need tough yardage inside, he’s probably the one that’s going to get it for us,” Thomas said. “He has no problem running inside the tackles. We could have all three of those guys on the field at the same time.
“It’s hard to measure, but I would not be surprised if our overall team speed … we might be a little bit quicker. We’re not quite as big, but Williams and Martinez are both faster than Andrew Gittemeier.”
By design, Thomas plays a number of underclassmen on occasion.
“Very honestly, that’s normal for us,” he said. “We try to make sure and play as many people that we can.
“I try to get three kids (at a position) and at least one of them is going to be a junior or younger and we’ll rotate him in the game, so that they get playing time all year long and that way they’re ready to go the next year.”
One of Heit’s primary targets will be wide receiver Clayton Henning (6-3, 170, senior).
Henning ranked second on the team in 2010 with 23 catches and led the Saints with 697 receiving yards for a 30.3 yards-per-catch average. He had a 66-yard catch-and-run for a score in last year’s game in Great Bend.
On defense, Thomas says he has some playmakers “that could wind up being pretty special.
“Our middle linebacker who played quite a bit last year before he got injured, Andrew Horn (6-2, 205, senior),” he said. “We have another returning outside linebacker/strong safety-type in Brendan Nachbar (5-11, 190). He directed traffic back there for us last year and he’s a gamer, very valuable for us, and if we don’t have him, we’re in trouble.”
John Cosentiono (5-8, 175, senior) is an outside linebacker after playing in the middle last season.
DIRECTIONS TO THE GAME — If you’re traveling into the Kansas City metropolitan area via Interstate 35, turn off on 119th Street and go east (right) at the traffic light until you reach Pflumm Road in Overland Park. Turn left on Pflumm Road and travel five-tenths of a mile north and you’ll see the St. Thomas Aquinas stadium lights. The physical address of Aquinas is 11411 Pflumm Road.
