OSHKOSH (NBC 26) — Oshkosh West High School is looking to improve upon their 4-5 record from last year by leaning on player leadership.
- The team is led by a senior class of 27 players
- Senior quarterback, Chase Brandl, looks to be a role model for his team
- Under head coach Joseph Ray, 2024 will be the first year the team will have had a consistent coaching staff.
After playing his entire life, Joseph Ray started coaching football in 2018.
"It was an opportunity for me to stay around it and give back to the kids, and I love football, I just love being around it," he says.
Ray accepted the head coaching position at Oshkosh West High School last year. He was the fifth coach in five years for the football team.
“We always say, like, average teams are led by coaches, great teams are led by players.”
With a senior class of almost 30 players, Oshkosh West High School is led by a cohort of older players
"I feel like we have a real connected senior class, and that's good to have," senior captain and left guard Nelson Fournier says.
And leading the group of seniors is third-time starting quarterback, Chase Brandl.
“When I took the job like I obviously did my research and looked around and Chase was a kid I was excited to coach," Ray says. "He's probably one of the most dynamic football players I've ever been around, he's extremely fast, extremely quick."
Brandl has played quarterback since fifth grade, but his football career has been anything but normal.
From COVID cutting short his eighth grade year, to a season ending injury his freshman year, to a lack of consistency in high school coaches.
"Coming into a season like this season, finally, with the same offense, the same coaching, I think we're definitely, like, a mile ahead of last year," Brandl says.
Brandl says having a large senior class has created a tight knit environment for the entire team.
“It's nice when you can have a class that all sticks together, because we've been through all that stuff, like I said, COVID, the three new coaches we had through our high school career, like, it's just kind of hard to have kids love the game when all that's going on, but we all stuck together," Brandl says. "We've been playing since third grade flag football, so we're all pretty close."
And Brandl hopes to lead the 2024 Oshkosh West team forward from a challenging past few years.
"Every time we go into practice, we say, right here, right now," he says. "We're just focused on today, we're not gonna worry about all that stuff from the past."
