Lovelady Football Faces Tough Season…With Tougher Lions
By Greg Ritchie
Messenger Reporter
LOVELADY – Lovelady Independent School District (LISD) students, teachers and administrators are back at work, teaching the kids and forming the leaders of tomorrow. Among them, those always beloved Lovelady Lion football players and coaches are hard at work, too. With a tough season ahead, the Lions have big shoes to fill each year, as their legacy continues to grow, with high expectations and a tough schedule to get through, before any thoughts of playoffs must wait.
LISD Athletic Director and Head Coach Will (Coach K) Kirchhoff is as optimistic as ever, telling The Messenger there’s no secret recipe to Lion success – it’s all in the attitude, he said, an attitude not only he and his coaches – but the community as a whole has instilled in these young men.
“They’re Lovelady kids. You’re going to get great effort and a lot of toughness and that’s just in their DNA and makes my life a lot easier,” a proud Coach K said. “That comes from the folks at home. When we get them, we just start teaching them to play a little football.”
The Lions will begin their march to the postseason this Friday Aug. 22, in their first scrimmage against Corrigan, with their first non-season game against Elkhart the following Friday, Aug. 30 in Elkhart, beginning at 7:30 p.m.
“We’ve got nine seniors out of this bunch and a good group with a lot of experience,” Coach K said. “We graduated quite a few from our offensive line last year – four of our five offensive line starters – which would be a lot – but we were fortunate enough to be able to play a full set varsity schedule. A lot of those guys got 10 games worth of snaps on JV and then played some snaps once we got to the playoffs. So, they’ve got a lot of really good experience.”
Lovelady finished the 2023 season 5-0 in their district, finishing as regional champions. With many names familiar to diehard Lions fans returning, expect these names to be prominent in the season again this year. Players like Tyler Gilchrist, Kye Terry, Lance Pierce and Cortavies Whitaker, among others, to be first and foremost on the field, and in the pages of The Messenger, with fan-favorite Lawanna Monk set to provide game summaries and action pictures again this year.
Pierce finished last year at QB with 1,410 yards passing and 19 touchdowns.
“We have Pierce as our returning quarterback. You know, he started 14 games for us and he just did such a fantastic job, and now he’s stepping into his senior year and being a good leader,” Coach K said.
Coach K keeps the game simple, helping to foster that “Lovelady spirit” and making sure the basics are always being looked after.
“We tell our kids that football at its core is about blocking and tackling and we want to block really well. On the offensive side, we want to tackle really well and on the defensive side, we want to give great effort,” Coach K explains. “When you boil it all down, that’s who wins the game. If you don’t miss tackles, they can’t score and if we block well, then we can score. We’re so fortunate to have great leadership within ourselves. Our kids are very self-motivated. We try keeping those core values and week to week, applying whatever is going to give us the best chance for success.”
Greg Ritchie can be reached at [email protected]
