2013 VarsityKansas.com Top 11 football team

Selection process

Top 11 and All-Class football teams are selected by The Wichita Eagle with the help of coaches across Kansas.

Every coach in the state is mailed a ballot to return to The Eagle, by mail or online, by the end of the season. Coaches may nominate their own players and players from other teams. They also are asked to supply statistics and comment on players they nominate.

The teams were selected by Joanna Chadwick. She tabulated nominations from the ballots and received additional input from coaches and other media members.

Top 11 teams are selected regardless of position, while All-Class teams are selected by position.

Riley Allen

Buhler

Senior running back

Coach Steve Warner: “Obviously he’s the kind of athlete that put us over the top. We had other great players, but he took us to the next level. He’s so dynamic and fast and explosive. In the first quarter of the state championship game, he wasn’t getting any yards. He still wanted the football and he found a way to make yards. I think he became a better running back after he sat out for three weeks and was injured. There was something that clicked. He did find yards when there was no yard.”

Jose Delgado

Derby

Senior linebacker

Coach Brandon Clark: “He was by far the most valuable player on defense. We stuck him in the middle of the field so he could play both sides. As the middle linebacker, he’s there to plug holes and stop the inside run, but he was fast enough to make plays at the line of scrimmage on stretch plays. He’s very smart and understands the game of football. Against some of the good teams we played, if we didn’t have Jose, half those plays he made wouldn’t have been made. That’s on him, being so athletic, so quick and so strong. He did a lot of those things on his own.”

DeAndre Goolsby

Derby

Senior tight end

Coach Brandon Clark: “Some games people wanted to stop our run game, and then those are the games where he goes off for 150 yards on five catches. You pick your poison, and most of the time, ti was to not let DeAndre touch the ball. That was fine with us because then we were able to run the ball.

“When he first came in, he was 6-1, maybe 210, 215. I saw him mature big time on and off the field. He grew a lot and became a physical presence in there. He had great feet. He worked on those feet, worked with us, worked with his dad.”

AJ Harris

Blue Valley

Junior offensive tackle

Coach Eric Driskell: “He blows people off the ball. He’s strong, and he’s quick and he’s very powerful. In the state finals we scored on a touchdown and, I don’t watch him very much because you don’t have to. But I asked him, ‘The backside linebacker must have got caught up in the wash, AJ, is that why you were blocking the safety?’ He said, ‘No coach, I blocked the safety.’ I watched it on film and he ran over the backside linebacker and then blocked the safety. It’s pretty amazing, the plays he makes.”

Brad Ivey

Senior linebacker

Coach Jon Holmes: “He was obviously strong enough to stop the run, but also fast enough to run plays down sideline to sideline and drop back into pass coverage. He was able to do anything we asked. We lost a lot of good players around him from our defense (from the 2012 team that finished second in 5A). He was the guy offenses were keying on. He was double teamed. He really had to step his game up, and he was able.”

Dailin Kruger

Silver Lake

Senior quarterback

Coach C.J. Hamilton: “This is probably a bad thing to say, but the injury helped him as a quarterback. Before, he had such great feet and he’s very fast, and if he felt any pressure at all, he’d start running. When he got the injury, we restricted how much he could do. If you feel pressure, get down. If you’re scrambling, run out of bounds.

“I think (the injury) forced him to trust the offensive linemen and the pass protection blocking and forced him to stay in the pocket a little more. In the past he’d have flushed and ran and made the play with his feet.”

Zach Nachbar

Salina South

Senior wide receiver

Coach Sam Sellers: “When you get someone that’s 6-3, 185 pounds with a lot of athleticism at the Kansas high school level, it’s almost cheating. He can run past kids. He created a giant matchup problem. If you played him soft, we’ll throw it to him quick, he’ll make you miss or run you over. If you played him up tight, no one could really bump him, and he’d run right by him and go deep.

“ His emergence as a superstar really opened up our offense. I think our success running the ball came a lot from our passing game. We were able to exploit teams that were stacking the box.”

Peyton Newell

Hiawatha

Senior tight end, defensive end

Coach Chris Diller: “He started even as a freshman, and he made it a little easier on coaching because we could cut the field in half. With him on one side, you won’t run this way and we will overload the other side. That helped us play pretty solid defense that way.

“Some of the plays he’d make His sophomore year was when I bought into the fact that he was pretty good. I knew he was going to be good, but when he was at defensive end, he makes the play on the quarterback, who is running the option. He tackles the quarterback, who got the pitch off and then tackles the pitch man for a three-yard loss.”

Ryan Ralston

Blue Valley West

Senior quarterback

Coach Scott Wright: “When you’re 6-4 and 220 and you carry the ball, he’s incredibly physical. He creates a dynamic that the defense have a hard time with. And when he throws the ball, he’s got the best arm strength of any kid I’ve seen in 33 years. He puts the ball where it needs to be and he can throw 80 yards.

“ In the middle of the season we had seven starters out for three games. In those three games we lost by a field goal, in overtime and another on a touchdown late. The fact of the matter is, he carried us through that time when we could have just folded. He carried us through until we got our guys back and won five games in a row.”

Braden Smith

Olathe South

Senior OL-DL

Coach Jeff Gourley: “The one thing we identified toward the end of last year is he needed to have some agility work. Not that it was bad, but the thing he wanted to do most was improve. His level of improvement is minor because he’s so good to begin with.

“He took the quick-foot ladder and he did drills that will help him with pass protection at the next level, even though we don’t pass much. He worked on quick steps and footwork and he got a little bit faster. He got stronger, too, and I don’t know how that happened.”

Traevohn Wrench

Gardner-Edgerton

Senior running back

Coach Marvin Diener: “He has big-play potential every time he touches the ball. He’s a strong, powerful running back, and he’s as good as any I’ve ever been around, and I’ve been around some good ones.

“ He’s a complete back in that he can run inside, he can go outside. He’s very good at finding cutbacks, using his blockers. At 6-1, 205, he’s a great-looking kid, and he’s fast. He has the size and speed to play on Saturday, and hopefully more than that. He is really, really quality.”

Steve Warner

Buhler

Coach

Senior Luke Berblinger: “He’s a player’s coach. He really just loves kids, and we’re all kind of buddies with him. I know it sounds weird because we respect him, but we can joke around with him, and I think that’s why he’s such a great coach.

“We made tons of adjustments for each team we played, especially in the playoffs. We all had a goal of winning state, and we all knew we could do it. He knew how hard we worked, and he told us to go get it.

“We’re all a big family. We spend a lot of time together in the summer, too, and we’d do anything for the guy next to you and for coach. We fought really hard to win for him.”

This story was originally published December 7, 2013 at 12:00 PM with the headline "2013 VarsityKansas.com Top 11 football team."