Coming off of a 4-7 season last year, many Bulldogs were left wondering what was next for the football team. However, the team has worked hard this off-season and is fired up to deliver a winning record.
Much of the team is quite confident in what they have been working on throughout the offseason.
Jonathan Desta (‘26) states that he and much of the team have been very consistent this summer and have been hard at work to prepare for the season.
“[This year] will be different,” said Desta, “We’re going to have a winning season.”
One major change in the team is the movement of Chamblee to a new region that will place the Chamblee Bulldogs against different teams than in previous years.
Desta said, “We’re definitely against some tougher teams [this year], but we’re up to the challenge. Some of the games will be really difficult, but we’ve got that.”
Admittedly, while some games may be tougher than last year, the Chamblee Bulldogs are up for the challenge.
Jack Robinson (‘27) said that he and the rest of the football team have worked hard this summer and are more than ready for this year’s games.
It seemed that this year’s summer practices were very successful for the team and hopefully a great indicator for the season.
“So we had a really big summer. We put more effort into this summer than we have any of the previous three years. We were [practicing] Monday through Friday every morning, and the kids would be here by 7:30 every day. We lift weights three days a week and we did a lot of football practice: offense, defense, special teams,” said Coach Swank.
As part of the team’s daily summer practices, they practiced several types of drills to hone their skills.
Steven Daum (‘26) says, “We would do mainly drills that had to do with the basics like catching for the defense, learning how to defend receivers. … We have a drill called ‘Pat and Go’ where the inside receivers, the outside receivers, and the running back split up and we just run our routes.”
In addition to the frequent drills, the team would travel to several colleges to play seven-on-seven games.
“We were at seven-on-seven tournaments almost every Thursday. We went to UGA, we went to Georgia Tech, we went to Georgia State, we went to Reinhardt, and then we had a padded camp over at Hill Grove,” said Swank.
Unfortunately, Chamblee lost their first game of the season against Pace 10-9 within the last minutes.
“Our offense was a little bit all over the place, but it’s the first game of the season. We’re warming up,” said Daum.
Having such a close game is likely a good indicator of what the team needs to improve on.
“Well for our team, what we can do better is just make sure we know what we’re doing and make sure we fill our roles as players. For example, wide receivers need to get their blocks whenever they need to be blocking, and everybody needs to run hard and have good energy. That’s all we can really do,” said Daum.
What likely led to the loss in the Pace game was due to the poor weather conditions.
“Well, I think Pace is a really good team, and we played pretty well. Ultimately, we scored a touchdown in a torrential downpour and we were not able to kick an extra point. Ultimately the difference in the game was they were able to make their extra point, and we didn’t get a chance to make ours,” said Swank.
Missed extra points did not come into play in Chamblee’s 33-0 loss to Tucker in the second game of the season.
Overall, with summer practice and optimistic attitudes, the Chamblee Bulldogs may be able to get a win this Friday when they welcome Southwest DeKalb to North DeKalb Stadium. Kickoff is set for 7:30.
