Of meat and potatoes: Hilldale line young, talented, but needs both on its plate

Jun. 25—Between team camps and early morning weight lifting, Evan Keefe and Koby East could meal-strategy together in a complimentary way.

Take any meat and potatoes plate. At this point, Keefe needs the potatoes, East the meat. The more both do that, the better the Hilldale linemen will be.

East, who moves from center last season to left guard in 2021, is doing so largely to the weight he's dropped over a year. On his own measure, that's 315 pounds to 260, which makes the move to a more mobile spot on the line a much better fit.

"Strict diet, working out three times a day," explained East, a junior who has seen the difference in performance at team camps this summer.

"I move a lot quicker. I have speed and quickness I didn't know I had."

It surfaced with avoiding the carbs and such.

Meanwhile, Keefe, a junior who will line up next to East at the tackle spot, has the quick feet and hands and conditioning. That's been confirmed at college camps this year. It helped earn him MVP status on the defensive front at the USA Football Camp he went to in Kansas City.

Last Sunday at the University of Arkansas, his 33-inch vertical jump was believed to be the top jump in camp by a lineman. His 40 was run in 5.0 seconds, his shuttle a 4.63. In the weight room, his squat has gone from a 385-pound max to 500 now.

Those are all impressive numbers for a lineman, but not yet netting offers being just halfway through his high school career.

His challenge in the meantime: Find 20-30 pounds to add to his 247-pound frame.

So, pass the potatoes, and and on occasion, toss in a plate of pasta. And keep grinding.

"I'm stronger, faster, and all that has helped me in my development," he said. "I just have to get a little bigger."

The two are key pieces in a line that returns four starters, with East shifting over a spot.

"The main difference between Evan and the other guys is he can move a little better," Hilldale head coach David Blevins said. "He may not have the huge body, but he's got a 7-foot wing span so he can play long, and that's to his advantage.

"Koby just couldn't move over 300. He has really improved there with the weight loss. Because of that, he'll wind up playing some defense for us."

Both will also play on the defensive front.

On the right side, Micah Gonzalez is at tackle and Grayson Gaddy at guard. Blair Paulson takes over at center as the new starter. All are juniors, including Wyatt Branscum, who could slip into the rotation.

"Micah gets better every day. He's a super-big body and he's learning to play with his hands," Blevins said. "Gaddy, he's just a kid who loves contact. Blair is smaller in size but has great hip explosion, really the best hips on the whole line."

Blevins is taking a special interest in the line this year, taking on position duties left by Phil McWilliams who began his first head-coaching job at Haskell this spring.

"It's been a fun time with so much experience back," Blevins said. "They're all super-competitive. They use their own time to go find ways to get better.

"The thing with having experienced guys is you can say we need to fix this and it gets fixed, whereas last year we had to stop and explain it."

That extra time spent at team camps brings advice from different coaching voices though. For Keefe, one coach he worked with at Arkansas was part of a the USA camp.

Blevins says the different info processed from different voices doesn't really present confusion when they all return to Base Camp Hornet.

"We tell them you can do it this way, and it's a great way to do it, but that's not the way we do it. We'll do it this way and that's how we'll play," he said.

"But what all that instruction can do is make you more coachable. If they learn our way and then a certain way at camp, then go to college and maybe do it that way, they see there's more than one way to skin a cat. Different coaches go about it different ways."

McWilliams may have been the familiar voice a year ago here, but Blevins, being a former Hilldale lineman himself before finishing at Muskogee, runs the show and has been there, done that.

"He obviously knows what he's talking about from where he's been," Keefe said.

All of them have shared in the bond of being the unsung heroes hidden in the stories, stats and adulation of the skill guys that benefit from their trench work.

"He gives us pretty good recognition," East said. "He makes us feel that we are there for need, and he has a good lineman personality. He knows what we do and appreciates what we do, knowing the team can't do it without us."