SOCIAL CIRCLE, Ga. — Social Circle has a huge bulk of their region championship team from a season ago returning. The Redskins only lost two senior defensive starters to graduation.
While head coach Jim Corasaniti stressed the difficulty of replacing them, he feels confident that the team will remain strong.
“We still have a great 10th, 11th and 12th grade class of players,” Corasaniti said. “They know what I’m expecting of them and they know that people have their eye on them now.”
Nevertheless, there is a lot of offensive firepower coming back to help lead the Redskins in 2023.
Jed Stapp led the team with 23 goals followed by Stetson Evans’ 12 and Cambyl Johnson’s 10 goals. Zavier Wallace also recorded eight goals while Ethan Knight, Preston Guy and Jude Nelson each had seven.
The offense helped Social Circle finish the season at 17-3 overall with a 13-1 region record — which allowed the Redskins to claim the region title.
However, the Redskins were upset in the first round of the Class A-Public playoffs by Region 6A-Public’s No. 4 seed Trion.
But Corasaniti believes that his team could learn a valuable lesson from that first round loss.
“We figured out that [Trion’s] first touch was just better than ours,” Corasaniti said. “That’s the thing we’re going to stress about this year is our first touch every time we get the ball.”
Though the Redskins are in a new-look region with Prince Avenue, Jasper County and Oglethorpe County, the goal is to go back-to-back region champs.
First things first with Social Circle’s taxing non-region slate.
It comes out of the gate on Jan. 31 with a matchup against Northgate. Sprinkled throughout the early part of the season are Walnut Grove and Georgia Military College as well.
Coming into the 2023 season after experiencing great success last season gives Corasaniti the feeling that his team will have a target on their back. Even so, he has faith that the players are up for the challenge.
“Every game is going to be tough because you have a bulls eye on you,” Corasaniti said. “We’re in a new region so we’ll play teams we never played before plus we have some good non-region games that will be huge tests for us.”
