LE GRAND – Heading into the 2016 campaign, East Marshall football head coach Matt Bandstra knows there are bound to be obstacles ahead this year. Nevertheless, that isn’t an excuse for the Mustangs not to improve upon each game and the 2015 season, in his eyes.

East Marshall capped off last fall with a 1-8 record, its only win: A 55-18 rout of non-district competitor BCLUW in the second week of the season.

“We’re going to be OK, we’re just not real deep. That’s our biggest challenge right now,” Bandstra said. “We’re doing some different things with practice [to avoid injury], less 100 percent live stuff than we’ve done in the past.”

Reducing the number of live repetitions players see during practices will hopefully reduce the number non-game injuries for the team. With the lack of depth the Mustangs have, each injury pays a heavy toll.

Bandstra said limiting live, 100-percent kind of plays gives the skill groups more control to fine tune some of the fundamentals of the game. The con to this is when Friday night comes, the game seems to be quite faster.

“We are kind of building numbers a little bit,” Bandstra said of four new players in the first week of practice. “We’re not going to be big, numbers-wise, by any stretch, but we are heading in the right direction.”

One of the biggest retuning players for the Mustangs will be quarterback Dru Boliver. The senior threw for 424 yards and two touchdowns last season, leading the Mustangs in passing. Junior Dillon Lee will fill in for graduate Nick Long. Lee rushed for 288 yards, three touchdowns on 55 carries.

But for Bandstra and Co., the Mustang offense won’t necessarily feature one playmaker all season.

“We’re looking for whoever has the hot hand that day, if you can manage, we’re going to take it,” Bandstra said. “So it could be any number of five, six, seven people on any given night. We’re not building our offense around any one person, but really trying to get that team approach.”

Lee and teammate Noah Bandstra – a sophomore – were the leading tacklers for the Mustangs last year, and both are returning with a combined 140 total tackles. East Marshall will also get juniors Logan Nicholson and Zane Johnson back, who were fourth and fifth on the team with 38 and 36.5 total tackles, respectively.

“We’ve got a group of sophomores and juniors willing to step up and make a difference; wanting to make a difference. We’ve stressed over and over, you don’t have to be a senior to be a leader. So they’re starting to emerge a little bit.”

Matt Bandstra is confident in the Mustangs’ defensive abilities coming back, rightfully so. The work will come on offense and trying to fit new and returning pieces of the puzzle together in order to cultivate scoring.

The Mustangs have set goals of a winning record and postseason play in front of them, but Matt Bandstra said some of the expectations set in front of his football team might not be able to be met by just looking at some numbers on paper.

“It really boils down to we want to be better at the end of the season than we are now,” Matt Bandstra said. “Which means we need to get better week by week. Every day. Every drill. Yeah, every team wants to win a state championship. And we have goals of improving on last year’s campaign. But we might do great things, it just might not show up on the scoreboard. East Marshall football has been down for a little while, but we’re trying to get it moving in the right direction.”