Jackson — The Saxony Lutheran Football squad has been hard at work over the summer preparing for their third full season as a team under head coach O.J. Turner.
Turner said that early in the summer, the focus was mainly in the weight room, as they wanted to put on weight to compete on the line with the bigger teams.
“A lot of those young bodies that we have are a year older now and have done a really good job in a weight room, not only just getting stronger, but being able to put some weight on,” Turner said. “Last year in a lot of our positions we were about 15-20 pounds lighter than a lot of our opponents, so we feel really good that we were able to kind of put some good weight on, we feel like we are just able to hold our own now.”
Turner said that he wants to focus on becoming more balanced this year, bringing the defense and special teams up to the level that the offense was at last season.
“We lost a lot of our seniors from our offensive line, which really was a good staple of our team last year,” he said. “I think offensively we were able to really control ball games. So it’s important this year to really be more balanced whenever it comes to offense, defense and special teams. So our focus as far as the coaching staff is to really get our defense definitely lined up kind of like how our offense was last year.”
One of the challenges of coaching a young team at a school that has only recently started a football program is the knowledge of the game, something Turner said the coaching staff has also been hard at work at throughout the summer.
“We still have some new kids that are new to the sport, so the biggest thing is getting our football IQ up,” Turner said. “So we’ve been in a classroom a ton this year and on a whiteboard and really making sure our kids know what they’re doing and what their assignments are.”
The team has also been focusing on a lot of fundamental defensive drills, focused on proper tackling techniques.
“We’re doing a lot of tackling drills, a lot of just kind of getting low and wrapping up,” Turner said. “It sounds very basic, but you know at the end of the day even in some of your big games it still comes down to the defense being able to tackle a ball and offense being able to control turnovers and things like that.”
Turner said that being surrounded by big schools with established teams has been crucial to Saxony’s quick growth as relative newcomers in varsity football. He said that his staff have also put an emphasis on team building and having the team and staff spend time together and get to know each other off the field.
“We do about five team building things a year with our team just to get those kids closer,” he said. “We get after the summertime when we got camp going on right now and they’ll get to learn from each other, but being off the field and really being with a buddy, I feel like whenever Friday night comes, they really kind of understand that buddy a little bit more. And I think they’ll fight a little bit harder for him.”
The Crusaders will begin the 2026 season at home on Friday, August 28 with a game against Veritas Christian Academy.
