Season Preview: Clearfield Boys Basketball Returns Four Starters

Preview by Curtis Campman

With football season still fresh in the minds of many Clearfield athletic supporters, fans will still get to see many of their gridiron favorites test their skills on the hardwood this winter. Robbie Meyers, Curtis Frye, Beau Swales, Christian Lezzer, and Trey Jordan are just a few who will trade in their shoulder pads and helmets for a pair of white Nike’s and tube socks Tuesday night as the Huntingdon Bearcats come to town to tipoff the 2011 Clearfield Bison Basketball Season.

“We have a very athletic team with a lot of basketball players that played on the football team. We are physical and strong and should be a fairly strong defensive team this year” commented Clearfield Head Coach Forrest Campman.

Campman who enters his 10th season at the helm of the Bisons cagers is set on using the same philosophy he instilled in the program since day one.

“No change in philosophy. We will play our matchup zone we have played over the last few years. We may play some triangle and two and some combination of man and zone coverage and press a little bit. We are going to do a little bit of everything” said Campman.

The Bisons will perhaps be fielding their most experienced team since their district championship during the ‘08-‘09 season, a team which returned three starters from the previous season. This year’s team can do one better by starting four players who were in the starting lineup at one point or another last season. Robbie Meyers is the squad’s leading scorer averaging 13 points per game last season. Curtis Frye and Christian Lezzer chipped in with 4.8 and 4.4 points per game respectively. Also Beau Swales, Seth Beardsley and Shawn Lord often found their names in the box score last season also.

“Offensively if you look back, we have basically four starters from last year’s team with Meyers, Frye, Lezzer and Swales. It’s more experience than we had coming back last year so we can’t complain that we aren’t experienced. We need to show that we can score. We have the potential to score better than last year, but we have to make sure to not turn the ball over as much as last year,” remarked Campman on his returning starters.

Swales, Lezzer, Meyers and Frye won’t be the only players making an impact though for the Bisons this year.

“We have a three year starter coming back in Curtis Frye, so that gives us a savvy starter out there. Robbie Meyers played a good inside for us last year, so we have an inside and outside player with him and Frye. Beau, who is an excellent defender, has experience playing at the varsity level. Lezzer, who played as a freshman and gained some experience, is an athletic kid who can score we are going to count on him to be better than he was last year. Trey Jordan was an athletic scorer for us last year in JV’s and we are looking for him to get to the bucket and score and do some things athletically. Shawn Lord, who was primarily on JV’s last year, gives us another 6’3″ kid out there with Robbie inside. Ryan Hertlin is back out this year and he is as savvy as any athlete out there; he isn’t tall but he gives us a big body on the floor. Seth is a pretty skilled guard who can come off the bench and give us an offensive lift.”

“We have a deep bench this season. We have some younger guys who could step in and help this year, and we have seniors like Andrew McCracken, Craig Bell, and Johnny Gaylor who have been with the program for three years and can help throughout the season,” commented Campman on his team.

The Bisons will enter their second full season as part of the Mountain Athletic Conference which is comprised of mainly District 6 schools. One of which is Huntingdon who the Bisons will square off with in the season opener.

“We open up with Huntingdon who lost a lot of guys from last year. They are only returning one player out of their top eight from last season. St. Marys is only returning two of their top seven. Hopefully that and playing our first four games at home will help us” said Campman.

Opening Tipoff is scheduled for 7 P.M. at Arthur J Weiss Gymasium on Tuesday.