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Sometimes, football players and coaches avoid talking about the team they want to play the most by saying they are just focusing on the first game on the schedule.
For Dysart High, they are one in the same. District rival Willow Canyon plays the Demons for the first time in more than a decade Friday, opening the home team’s season in El Mirage.
Dysart comes into 2018 with expectations of the 4A playoffs, through an improvement in leadership and ability. Coach John Ganados said both were lacking his first year at the helm.
He said the program has seen its numbers grow from about 65 in 2016, when Manuel Alcantar was the head coach, to 119 as of Aug. 14. The second-year coach believes the program is in a better position for this season and beyond.
“The feeling of football here is good,” Coach Ganados said. “Just going out in the community and showing them that a lot of my coaches are with me and we’re showing these kids we care. We’re going to these feeder schools that are supposed to come to Dysart and we’re being a presence there so they want to come to Dysart.
“And now it’s about winning. Once we do that I think more people will draw to Dysart and want to be at Dysart. But to get to this point, I feel good about that. Now we just have to compete and win some football games. We have to be better than last year.”
The Demons started 2017 with an 0-5 record before a 4-1 finish in region play.
Ganados said the team had the opportunity to win more games lost but didn’t capitalize.
“It was very disappointing,” he said about Year 1. “You have to have good seniors. We didn’t have that. We didn’t have leadership. The way we lost some games last year, a handful of them, they could’ve gone either way.”
Four of the Demon’s six losses came by an average margin of eight points.
The team benefits from the return of senior quarterback Kobe Ganados, in his third and final year starting.
In the 6-foot range, Ganados is more of a dual-threat quarterback, with 917 yards, 11 touchdowns and four interceptions last season. He also rushed for 768 yards and five touchdowns on an 8.5-yard average.
“I’m most excited to play my last year of high school football with all of my brothers,” Kobe Ganados said. “Pretty much do whatever we didn’t do last year. Win the region, make the playoffs, and get a better record than we did last year.”
Coach Ganados said his son has always been a leader, a quality usually expected of in a starting quarterback. In his sophomore year, he led the team to a 9-2 record, winning the Black Canyon region. As such, expectations in his final year are high.
“All I’m praying for is that he stays healthy,” Coach Ganados said. “If he stays healthy I think we’ll do good things. But I’m expecting him to put up numbers and to put us into the win category. He’s always been a leader. He loves the game. Very smart.
“That’s all we do. We eat, talk, sleep football.”
While the overall height on Dysart is lacking, Ganados has a lanky wide receiver in 6-foot-3 senior Adam Campbell.
“We’re expecting big things from him. He’s pretty fast, long,” Coach Ganados said of Campbell. “We have Seth Henderson who is our running back. Runs with a lot of energy, runs hard. He should have started about two years and he finally figured it out. He’s a senior now. Our O-line when they’re healthy, they’re pretty big boys. They’ve been around together for a while.
“Kris Raines, he’s a hitter. He’s a runner. He’s one of the best athletes on this team.”
Senior Hassan Razzouki is the only returnee to register more than 10 catches in 2017. Likewise, sophomore Bobby Gardea is the only non-quarterback returning to have rushed more than 100 yards last season.
But with Henderson, Raines and Elijah Goodloe stepping up, Gardea might be lower on the depth chart. However, Coach Ganados sees him having a spot somewhere on defense.
The Demons competed in 7-on-7 games at Tolleson, Peoria, Liberty, Universal Athletics and Northwest Christian. They traveled to camp in Cottonwood.
“I was impressed because I think our secondary is 100 times better than it was last year,” Coach Ganados said. “And that’s what hurt us last year. That’s where we lost games. So we got a lot of work in. We have more receivers this year. Of course our quarterback got stronger and faster. We had a great camp”
Junior center Israel Nolasco, who has been on the varsity team since his freshman year, said Willow Canyon is the team he is looking forward to playing.
“I’m looking forward to playing them and shutting them up,” Nolasco said. “There’s a kid on there, his name is Kelly Garcia. He used to play with us, and he transferred over.”
Garcia, a senior with the Wildcats, was expected to be a fixture on both sides of the ball with a 6-foot-4, 260-pound frame. He would have been the leading tackler to return, with 51 in 2017.
However, Garcia will not play in the season opener, sitting out five games because of the transfer.
In addition, Raymond Cruz, who paced the team with 11 sacks, graduated.
The focus isn’t all on the Wildcats, however. This team, while benefiting from the influx of students signing up to play football, is low on game experience. Because of that, staying healthy is a top priority.
“We’re low in numbers at the varsity level,” Coach Ganados said. “We don’t have the depth where if someone goes down, we can fill that person with someone that’s going to be a difference maker. It’s going to be tough to do that.”
Optimism is up in El Mirage, and the 2018 Demons are expected to at least give future iterations a model of integrity and commitment to the game.
Dysart is in the 4A Black Canyon Region, where Apache Junction, the reigning champions, and new foe Glendale are considered by the Demons as the teams to beat.
Fortunately for the Demons, the games against those teams are in El Mirage.“And no disrespect to Washington and Combs,” Coach Ganados said.
“They’re going to aim for us because we beat them up last year. But AJ and Glendale would be the two that we see on the schedule.”
While Coach Ganados didn’t hide the fact that most on his team are looking forward to play Willow Canyon, he’s taking a more calculated approach to his second year.
“The only thing that matters to me is the region,” he said about the schedule. “This region is going to be good this year. And I respect every team in the region. We have to take one game at a time. I think we’ll do well. We have the depth and athleticism to play with people.”
Like most of Arizona, the Demons have had to practice in temperatures over 100 degrees, maybe even as high as 117. But Nolasco said it’s one thing players have to overcome living in one of the dryer states in the nation.
Kobe Ganados and Nolasco said the team has jelled during the summer, with the quarterback saying camp and practices have been the best he’s been a part of.
“I’m thinking this team will do pretty good,” Nolasco said. “If we keep playing together, not bringing anyone down on the team. If someone messes up, you have to bring them up. If we keep a good mentality throughout the whole season I’m pretty sure we’ll go pretty far.”
Dysart's Kobe Ganados throws a pass during practice on Aug. 14, 2018 at Dysart High School in Surprise.
Dysart's Kobe Ganados throws a pass during practice on Aug. 14, 2018 at Dysart High School in Surprise. 
