High up in the press box at Elk River’s football stadium, Phil Johnson peers down at the Elks football team through a pair of binoculars. If anyone should be able to pinpoint tells in Elk River’s shifty offensive scheme, it’s Johnson, a former coach.
Never mind stopping the Power T. It’s challenging enough just to watch Elk River’s football offense.
Elk River’s approach, built on misdirection and a well-hidden ball, can puzzle its spectators — especially camera operators — just as much as it fools defenses.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
September 13, 2024 at 4:09AM
As a spotter for Elk River’s public address announcer, Johnson relays which of the four Elks players behind the offensive line — junior quarterback Levi Harris and three running backs — receives the ball. Meanwhile, the other three players scatter, doing their best to trick the Brainerd defense into thinking they’ve got the ball tucked under an arm.
Defending against the school’s shifty Power T offense is an art of discipline. So is watching it.
Sometimes the deception even tricks Johnson. “Harris,” he calls at first. “Oh, no — Schmidt.”
Elk River (2-0) uses a run-heavy, old-school Power T offense. Head coach Steve Hamilton implemented the scheme, popularized in his native Michigan, when he took over the Elks football program coming off a winless 2010 season.
“It’s a real regimented offense,” Johnson said. “You got to work together. And you see how that is with the fakes. The quarterback has certain steps that he makes, and the fakes that he makes try to tie up the defense so everybody has to commit to a certain player on the field.”
An Elks running back can be clear of his defenders before spectators realize the player sprinting toward the end zone is the one with the ball, causing the buzz of the crowd to swell into a delayed ruckus. It’s not so complicated for the Elk River players: They see that window, and they go.
“Once you see that open gap, it’s kind of the feeling like you’re looking towards the back of the end zone,” said running back Brecken Keoraj, who scored his fourth and fifth rushing touchdowns of the season Friday against Brainerd. “We have fakers out there. We’re trusting our linemen with their blocks, and I know our linemen are blocking downfield.
“When we’re out, and we get a gap and we hit it, it’s almost like a touchdown, automatically.”
The effect is seen
Slipping between those gaps unnoticed helped Elk River put up four scoring plays of 70 yards or more against Brainerd, explosive bursts rather than time spent inching down the field.
For a photographer on the sideline, the work is equally frustrating and exhilarating: tracking an Elks player through the lens only to realize another player has the ball and he’s already 40 yards downfield.
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Like Johnson, photographer Becky Lassila is familiar with the Elks. A teacher at the nearby Ivan Sand Community High School, Lassila has photographed the football team for six years. Her son was part of the Elks’ 2022 Class 5A championship squad, and he was able to give her “a lot of pointers.”
“When you watch and study, you can see little tells. And because I do the photography, I see a lot of tells,” Lassila said. “I usually get a clue before most people do, to be honest, but I think I’m lucky in that regard.”
If another photographer, one less familiar with the Elks, comes to Lassila for advice, sometimes she gives pointers. But “sometimes it depends on who they’re for,” Lassila said with a grin that indicated she’d hide those secrets.
During the game against Brainerd, she didn’t have time to divulge any secrets anyway. She was interrupted by a long touchdown run by Keoraj and quickly brought her camera viewfinder back up to her eye.
No wandering eyes allowed
In its first two games, Elk River has attempted only four passes but averaged 493.5 rushing yards. After going 4-7 last year, an older, more experienced roster has helped the Elks start the season by scoring 44 points against defending 5A champ Chanhassen, then putting up 50 on Brainerd.
Clearly, stopping the Power T requires a strategy.
“You have to play your area,” Brainerd coach Jason Freed said. “If your eyes start to wander against this offense, you’re guessing on who has the ball.”
To be better safe than sorry, some of the student photographers and videographers play their area, too. The Elk River yearbook has multiple student photographers on different corners of the field, ready to get shots of explosive runs.
“If you didn’t get it, there’s a good chance that one of your team members should be on it,” said Elissa Vasseur, a senior at Elk River who photographs football for the school yearbook. “So even though you didn’t get it, it’s good to rely on the people around you and depend on them for getting the shots.”
The students running the livestream broadcast from on top of the press box have one camera zoomed in and one zoomed out, a wide angle for those times an Elks runner has broken free down the field.
It helps avoid the pitfall seen in some Elk River highlights online: a camera focused on one player that shifts to another when the camera operator realizes this truth about the Power T:
The hidden ball doesn’t fool just the opposing defense.
For Minnesota’s largest school classification that includes Maple Grove, Lakeville North and Minnetonka, no team has yet to put its stamp on Class 6A this season.
