If you want some evidence of Zach Smith’s value to the Southern Tier Diesel, see how the 2017 team performed without him.
Smith couldn’t play in Saturday’s Northeastern Football Alliance AA championship at the Carthage Revolution after tearing an elbow ligament a week earlier in a semifinal victory over the Charlotte Colonials. After a mostly healthy first half of the season, the Diesel’s injuries started to mount with the loss of Smith and safety Caleb Garvey against Charlotte last week and end Jayden Pire a month earlier against the same team.
The losses showed as the Diesel quickly fell behind and never caught up in a 53-6 loss while Carthage collected its first championship.
“I went up there without obviously the starting quarterback but also a defensive leader as well and just everything else that Zach does,” coach and owner J.R. Bennion said. “He’s a major, major component to this team and I dare say, like the heartbeat of it.”
While the Diesel ultimately ran out of depth by the championship round, Bennion thought the 16 who played Saturday had a better chance at competitiveness than they showed.
“We didn’t lose, we got our (butts) kicked, and got them kicked and picked back up and kicked again,” he said. “There’s nothing you can say about that. Were they better than us with 16 guys? Yeah. Were they 53-6 better than us? No. We just … coverage units were jogging, and we ended up hugging a lot of air. They played hard, but you could tell that something was missing.
“I said something on Facebook where we didn’t expect to be anywhere near where we were looking at how things were in the beginning. We came together, but I still say wholeheartedly we could have been better than we were. The issues that plagued us … like tackling, we talked about that all year long.”
The team, Bennion said, clearly dropped in morale when realizing Smith could not play in Carthage. But league all-star running back James Fisher, who moved to quarterback and scored the Diesel’s lone touchdown on an 8-yard third-quarter run, took on the responsibility as well as he could.
“He gave me everything, every ounce that he had out there,” Bennion said. “Completely out of position, never practiced it. Nobody’s going to confuse him for a quarterback but he gave me everything he had because he played completely out of position with several guys, linemen going both ways.
“Without him being able to pass, they just stacked the box and we just couldn’t do anything. We had to make major offensive adjustments on the ride up there.”
Bennion said his team is likely to lose several veteran contributors, including lineman Nick Bocharski, end Chad Hancock (playing for Bennion since 2005) and Donnie Moore (since ‘05). And Smith will have to decide about his future after a serious injury to his throwing arm.
“Nick has been with me since 2010,” Bennion said. “Nick is 46 years old and still manhandles 20, 22-year-old guys out there. Nick will hang ‘em up and you’ve got some other ones, some older guys.
“This level of football, people want to look on it like it’s beer league softball, people reliving their glory days,” Bennion added. “No, no, no. If that’s what the case was — and no offense to them — they would play in the alumni game, one game where you have six practices and it would look like the Robin Williams and Kurt Russell movie (The Best of Times). These guys are playing 10, 12, 14 games a year. These guys are sacrificing eight months out of the year. We start in March, sometimes even February, we’re having indoor workouts. That’s dedication, that’s time away from your family, that’s sacrifice.”
