Rough Riders ready

The 2006 season wasn't a whole lot of fun for Roosevelt.

The Rough Riders finished in fifth place in the Windy City and as a result were dropped down to the Inter-City North. The good news is that with a little hard work they should be able to contend for the conference title.

"Since we did move down conferences I think we're playing against competition that we can handle," Roosevelt head coach Nick Diedrich said. "I think we have enough talent that we should be in every game that we're playing. We've set some pretty high goals and would like to get back into the conference that we were in last year."

The biggest thing Roosevelt has had to overcome during two-a-days has been low turnout. It's tough to have effective practices whenever you have less than 22 players.

"It's been really frustrating having low numbers in a school with 1500 kids in it," Diedrich said. "We have 60 kids that say they want to play but when they come and see what they have to do, they're not always into it.

"We just need the people who are here to give their best effort and we do make sure the kids that are playing are of high quality and have been putting in the time."

The players sweating their butts off are a bit frustrated as well, but they realize they can only focus on who's on the practice field.

"We just need people out here and we need to practice hard and communicate," senior center Fernando Bautista said. "We want to win conference and make it up to the next level. It's my senior year so I want us to beat all these teams and lead next year's team up there."

While Bautista will be the key to the offensive line, Jamar Evans and Jesus Alarcon will share the workload in the backfield.

"My goals are to win games and win conference," said Alarcon who is a team leader with three years of varsity experience. "I'm trying to help everyone out and just cheer them on."

Vying for the quarterback job is Nathan Jimenez and Sergio Montoya. Whoever wins the job will need to move the team down the field in a controlled offense.

"We're going to a lot of two tight end sets," Diedrich said. "We need to be able to pull and trap and really get a good running game to set up our pass. We want to be a ball control team. We don't need anything complex."

Roosevelt opens the season against Ag. Science, Saturday, 11 a.m. at Stagg Stadium