After a break out season last fall, Juanita High School has returned to the football field fresh and ready to play.

The Rebels lost a large group of senior starters, who were in large part responsible for the physical play the team showed last year, but a new focus has the team ready to go this year.

“We lost a lot of really good players, we have three returning starters on offense and three returning starters on defense coming back. But we are different,” said head coach Shaun Tarantola. “I think we’re going to be really good, but I think we’re going to be very different. We going to rely a lot more on speed and power, we still have the ability to play physical. Last year was unique in how physical we were. That was a unique team, in that every position there were guys who could hit and were bigger players. This year, I think we’re unique in how quick we are. We have a lot of kids that have some speed. Our goal is to utilize that to our advantage.”

The group of seniors helping lead the team feel the same way, that they can use that speed to help them gain yards on the field.

“We want to play fast and focus on playing up to our opponents, not down to them,” said senior Dom Chadwick.

The team knows with a lot of new guys in new positions that the first couple of games will be crucial and they are excited to see how it tests out.

“We have a bunch of new guys and it will be interesting, but it will be fun,” said senior Nathan Dean of the team’s first game against Redmond.

To make everything gel, Tarantola said they’ve focused on playing the Juanita way.

“We just really focus on day to day and talking about our core values and doing things the Juanita way,” said the coach. “Focusing on our three core values, team, trust and excellence. We feel like if we are handling ourselves in those ways and building our trust and confidence, we’re doing things that are best for the team and taking care of the team, then we have the ability and all of the wins will take care of themselves.”

Specifically the players said they are looking forward to the game against Bellevue, which the Rebels almost won last season. It was games like the 21-14 loss to the Wolverines that showed Juanita just how close they were to knocking off some of the top teams in the state.

“There’s definitely expectations, and a higher level of expectations,” said Tarantola after last season state playoff run. “I think there is a higher level of confidence amongst our players that they have the ability to do great things, when we get in a tight situation. We did win some games last year in tight situations, so I think our players have that confidence that if we get into a tight situation that they will be able to get it done.”

But in KingCo 3A anything is possible, which the coaches know.

“With our schedule, every year we feel like there are five or six games that if we don’t play well we could get beat, but if we play well we can win,” said the coach. “For us it’s really focusing on one day at a time and one game at a time, not getting too far ahead of ourselves. Our most important game right now is game one against Redmond.”

The Rebels will host Redmond on Friday, Sept. 2 in the first game of the season. The team will then head to Pop Keeney Stadium on Sept. 9 to take on Inglemoor.