High School Football Previews: Andover Central Jaguars

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — Andover Central is heading into 2024 as the reigning sub-state champions and is planning to chase a state championship this year.

The Jaguars have experience on the big stage, winning the championship in 2021, but fell just short last year to St. Thomas Aquinas. That made the team hungry to get the job done this year.

Sixth-year head coach Derek Tuttle said the team needs to focus on consistency, work on technique and perfect the details to keep making playoff runs.

“Well, we got to have fun, we got to have a lot of energy,” Tuttle said. “We have to have, you know, like I said, consistency in what we’re doing every day. Like I told the guys at the start of practice, I said, if you want to get to where you want to be, we have to earn it every day. There’s always things we need to improve on. And we’re going to talk about that internally with our guys. But we got some things going in the right direction. But just like any talent team this time of year, we have a checklist of things that we got to get a lot better at.”

There are a lot of talented returners ready to make an impact for the Jaguars, including senior quarterback Jace Jefferson. He threw for over 2,000 yards last year, and he’s backed by a skilled offense. Brandt Stupka and Jason Adler both finished with over 800 receiving yards. Maddox Archibald rushed for over 1,200 yards.

Defensively, there are a lot of strong players on the line, and both sides of the ball are ready to work towards a winning season.

“Our defense likes to work together,” linebacker and tight end Logan Taggart said. “We are all physical. We’re already just for anything that comes our way. We’ve all been preparing this whole summer. We’re not going to be as nervous since we’ve all played and made it to stay all the way through playoffs.”

“We’re very motivated, and the summer, everybody coming to the summer weights and conditioning and going to crunch week,” Jefferson said. “Last week, a lot of people showed up. So we’re very motivated, from the line to the receivers to defensive backs, and to the linebackers. Just everybody has a lot of talent.”

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