New Greenwood coach Justin Boser, who arrived in Johnson County this spring after five seasons at Clarksville, hopes to steer the Woodmen back in the right direction after just three wins over the last two years.
Chris Williams | For the Daily Journal
When he took over as the head football coach at Clarksville in the fall of 2018, Justin Boser was starting from absolute zero. The Generals had lost 35 consecutive games and had no sense of what a winning culture was supposed to look like.
Boser began the process of building one from the ground up, setting standards for everything from how a team is supposed to act in the weight room to how it’s supposed to look getting off the bus at a road game. He spent the last five years cementing new standards in place there.
The situation he’s inheriting at Greenwood is nowhere near as dire; Mike Campbell, now the school’s athletic director, laid plenty of foundation in his 17 seasons at the helm and steered the Woodmen to a Class 4A semistate appearance in 2017. But coming off of a 1-9 season, at least some sort of rebuild is necessary, and Boser believes that the lessons he learned while lifting Clarksville’s program to respectability can carry over at his new post.
“The first thing is how you treat the players,” Boser said, noting that he’s been able to develop at least some sort of connection with each of Greenwood’s 81 players since arriving in mid-April. “They needed to know that I care about them, and they needed to know that I’m on their side first — and then we start building on top of that.
“It is different, but you do carry those lessons of how you treat others, how I like our program to run as far as internally — whether that’s taking care of laundry and making sure equipment’s right … how we travel.”
Greenwood will have a bit of a different look this fall, and that isn’t limited to the new uniforms and helmets or the eye-popping gray field turf that got installed during the offseason.
Gone is Campbell’s trusty power rushing offense, replaced with a spread formation that Boser is confident will highlight the talents of a senior-dominated offense returning quarterback Brock Riddle, top running backs Alan Burnett and Jackson Haessig and five offensive linemen — Kobe Keithley, Jaxton McClain, Douglas Hobbs, Alex Skinner and Alex Kramer — with starting experience.
“It’s spread to help what we can do best,” Boser said. “If you had a big line and a big running back, yeah, power’s a good idea. But this year, we really feel good about our returning offensive line, but this helps give them some angles. It’s spread to run, though. High school football’s still — you must run the ball to win football games. But we’re revamping the passing game; Brock’s really got a strong arm, and we have good receivers out there that have worked hard.”
“It’s real exciting,” Riddle said of the change. “I know me and my receivers have worked a lot to show that we can pass more. I’m glad we have the opportunities to, and I think it’ll be fun.”
Those receiver positions — and several others on the depth chart — remain open for the taking going into Friday’s season opener at Seymour. Boser doesn’t see that as a problem at all; rather, he wants to avoid complacency from setting in among players as he builds depth that the Woodmen will need to run the annual gauntlet that is the Mid-State Conference.
Greenwood has gone primarily starters against starters in the preseason — and while load management will be a concern once the regular season begins, Boser wants to keep iron sharpening iron all year long.
“We’re going to carry competition throughout the year at a lot of spots,” the coach stated. “That’s what excites me most about this team is, there’s not going to be a week that we’re not going to have a competition somewhere for a job. So there’s no relaxing and saying, ‘Oh, I’ve got this job.’ … We have a two-deep of guys that we fully trust to be in there on Friday nights, so that’s exciting to be able to have that competition week in and week out.”
Riddle, one of the players whose job is probably safe, isn’t relaxing either. With just one win under his belt as QB1, he’s got plenty to keep him on his toes.
His teammates do, too. This isn’t the same level of reclamation project that Boser inherited at Clarksville; there’s a foundation and a built-in level of pride here, and the Woodmen are eager to prove that their recent struggles are the exception, not the rule.
“A lot of other teams and other classmates and everyone thinks we’ve sucked these past few years,” Riddle said. “And they’ve got a reason to, but it just motivates us more.”
SCOUTING THE WOODMEN
Coach: Justin Boser
Last season: 1-9, lost to Martinsville in Class 4A sectional opener
Key returnees: DB Josh Amburgy, LB Cole Basey, RB Alan Burnett, WR/DB Tanner Crouch, DL Gabe Folco, RB Jackson Haessig, OL Douglas Hobbs, OL/DL Kobe Keithley, OL Jaxton McClain, QB Brock Riddle and LB Cooper Smith, seniors; WR Jeremiah Carter, OL Alex Kramer, WR Amare Middleton and OL Alex Skinner, juniors
Top newcomers: WR Chase Monroe, senior; WR Josh Carroll and TE Brady Cave, juniors; DL Carson Andreas and DB Gunner Ruppert, sophomores
Outlook: The Woodmen opened 2022 with a win over eventual Hoosier Hills Conference champion Seymour — then proceeded to end Mike Campbell’s final year at the helm with nine straight losses. Boser, who brought a moribund Clarksville program to life, will try to bring a different energy to Greenwood in his first season. He’s transitioning the offense from a longtime power run attack to a spread, and he’s got a senior-dominated group to do it with. Riddle is back under center with both of his top two rushers (Burnett and Haessig) and five offensive linemen with starting experience all returning. What the receiving corps lacks in experience it should make up in speed.
Defensively, Crouch, Smith and Basey were three of the top four tacklers on the team last fall, and Folco offers a veteran presence up front while sophs Andreas and Ruppert provide an infusion of young talent.
With 81 players on the roster, Boser believes he has enough depth that there will be competition for at least some starting jobs every week, which should keep everyone pushing to improve. Whether that translates to better results against an always brutal Mid-State Conference slate remains to be seen, but the Woodmen figure to be just as scrappy under the new regime as they always have been.
2023 SCHEDULE
Date;Opponent;Time
Friday;at Seymour;7 p.m.
Aug. 25;at Indian Creek;7 p.m.
Sept. 1; at Martinsville;7 p.m.
Sept. 8;Mooresville;7 p.m.
Sept. 15;at Plainfield;7 p.m.
Sept. 22;Perry Meridian;7 p.m.
Sept. 29;Decatur Central;7 p.m.
Oct. 6;at Franklin;7 p.m.
Oct. 13;Whiteland;7 p.m.
