By Charles Prince

The North Jefferson News



Last season, the Fultondale Wildcat football team got off to one of the best starts in school history, winning their first seven games and rising to No. 6 in the state 2A polls. Then, over the next four weeks, they lost their final three regular season games by a combined 16 points, finally, they lost in the first round of the state playoffs by seven points at Piedmont.

Wildcat rising senior offensive lineman Garrett Godsey doesn’t get too happy when he looks back on the 2007 campaign, because he sees how the season ended, not how it started.

“I don’t look at the 7-0,” he said. “I look at it that we’re 0-4 heading into this year, and I want to do all I can to make sure it doesn’t become 0-5. There’s a sour taste in or mouth about the way our year ended, and we’re working to do something about it. Everyone on our team decided they wanted to work hard and get better.”

Part of the hard work came in the weight room this summer, as the whole team got bigger and stronger, including Godsey, who’s strength increased in all lifts. The lineman went from a 195-pound bench press last summer to 235 this year. His squat increased from 355 to 425 and his power clean went from 185 to 235.

“Our team’s looking stronger this year,” he said. “Everyone took the initiative and hit the weights hard. I’ve seen how the added strength helps me, when I’m blocking I can push the lineman away easier on a drive block and I can control him better.”

Godsey admits he wasn’t always the one of the hardest workers on the Wildcat’s team. Before a growth spurt, he was satisfied with his backup role as a 5-foot-6, 175-pound freshman center. Then he grew over the summer before his sophomore year, to 5-foot-11 and 235 pounds. Today, entering his senior season, he stands 6-foot-1 and weighs 265.

“When I got bigger, I decided I wanted to do something and I really started trying to get better,” he said. “I really didn’t listen to the coaches before. But if you listen to the coaches and try to improve, you can.”

By his junior season, Godsey was penciled in at the starting right tackle position in the Wildcat’s ground-oriented Wing-T attack. He helped the Wildcats offense run for more than 3,400 yards. After the Wildcats reached the state playoffs for the first time in five years, Godsey was named to the All-North Jefferson football team.

““I’m surprised I played as well as I did last year to get named to the (all-area) team, but I did mess up some and the coaches let me know about it,” he said. “I thought our team was improved coming out of the spring, so I thought we’d be better, but I didn’t think we’d do as well as we did last season.”

Godsey lists seeing the team achieve a No. 6 ranking in the state polls and reaching the playoffs as the two biggest highlights of the 2007 football season.

This spring, Fultondale head coach Keith Register moved Godsey back to center, a change which challenges the senior, but which also allows him to face opponents he can handle with less difficulty than when he was at tackle.

“It’s hard to snap the ball and then carry out a blocking assignment, but I think I’m better at it now than I was three years ago,” he said. “I like the move to center, because I’m not playing over an athletic defensive end any more, now I’m facing a big tackle.”

Godsey and all the Wildcat down lineman, not only put in work in the weight room this summer, they also went to the Southeastern Lineman Camp, where they learned new techniques that they’re expecting to help them improve their overall play.

“The camp was voluntary,” Godsey said. “But every lineman we have on the team, first and second string, went. We were thinking about that 0-4 and what we could do to change it.”

After last year’s playoff appearance, Godsey and his teammates are seeing a new attitude from people outside the Wildcat’s program.

“When we won three games (2006), no one in school could understand why anyone would be on the football team,” he said. “But, after last year, it feels different now. People respect our team and you hear a lot of the parents asking how the team is looking. All you hear now is how everyone is looking forward to this season.”

Godsey explained that everyone on the team is more excited about this season than they’ve been about any season since he’s been on the club. He and his teammates are so excited, he said, that they look forward to the practices as much as to the games.

With the summer of work over now, Godsey has set his sights on some lofty team goals for the fall.

“We want to go back to the playoffs and hopefully, we want to finish in the top two of our region, so we can host a home game,” he said. “We watched J.B. Pennington go to the third round last year and it was hard, because we could have beaten them ( a 22-21 loss that the Wildcats led until the final 45 seconds). We think it should have been us there (hosting a first round home game), but we messed up our chance. We going into this season determined not to mess up our chances again.”