Hey, Coach Laster, heading into your seventh season with the Royals, made it to the quarterfinals again last year.

What did you learn from a year ago?

You know, just a lot of hard work and getting a lot of reps and grow on a team together.

You know, keeping guys together a lot.

You're kind of plays all for you.

I really wish that we could have been further at least another week or two with those guys.

But, you know, I think I learned that having a good team chemistry with a lot of older guys that have been together a lot more.

That means a lot when it comes to trying to put together a good team.

So coming off of the season that you had last year, finishing ten and three back to back double digit win seasons there in Cochran, how have spring and now summer workouts been for you here in 23?

It's been good.

You know, I think finally you fill out your your coaches and start with something.

I hate that it took seven years to do that.

But it's like these younger guys have shown that they really were paid attention from the older guys.

You know, we graduated 20 seniors, but with this group we have really young.

They work differently because of the way they watch the guys in front of them.

And and that's really been rewarding to see.

A fun offseason topic is always recruiting.

Tell me about some of the top playmakers that are getting offers and then somebody on your team that deserves an offer.

Yeah, you know, we've we've got a lot of young kids, but, you know, we've got a couple of guys that are, you know, that stick out.

Marcus Newson has a couple of offers from smaller schools and Mark is Brown is a guy that can play corner, can play receiver.

He's going to pick up some some stuff here and there.

So we're kind of on the front end of that guy's got to get some good video early part of the season and but you know I think Mark is is a guy that deserves an offer and will work hard to get one year in region to D1 and class A and it's a lot of heavyweights I mean it is Swain's Boro who made it to the last game of the year Dublin who always wants to get to the last game of the year.

You always want to get to the last game of the year, Jeffco and East Laurens.

And that also means that you've got to find six non-regional opponents to fill out your schedule.

So when you look at your schedule here in 23, outside of region and in region, what do you see?

Well, you know, it's tough.

I mentioned Coach Alford earlier.

We you know, we played them.

We had a tough game with them last year, but we won 17 to nothing.

But, you know, they played for a state championship last year, got a lot of guys coming back.

And that's going to be a really tough game.

It's like bigger schools like Dodds in West Lawrence or right here in our backyard.

And, you know, so the Utah Wilcox into that and it's just it's just a bunch of local guys that that don't like each other on the field a whole lot and a lot of good players on the field.