Defense wins championships, or so the cliché goes, and the key to a good defense is winning the battle in the trenches. Linemen are the anchors of the line of scrimmage. They have the ability to wreak havoc on the quarterback, disrupt the running lanes and drop back into coverage. The defensive line is expected to be one of the more versatile groups on the gridiron, and that’s what the Pam Pack are asking of their defensive linemen.

After a dead period last week during the July 4 holiday, head football coach Jon Blank was fired up to get back on the field and in the weight room on Monday.

“Any day that you can play football, practice football, play a game, or whatever it is with football, it’s a good day,” Blank said.

The Pam Pack is just six weeks away from stepping onto the field under the lights against North Pitt on Aug. 23.

Blank mentioned that his defensive line has a healthy amount of competition for this season.

“We actually feel like we have some depth there for the first time in years. We got eight guys that I think we can rotate for our four-man front,” Blank explained. “We’re looking to rely heavily on Rod Moore and Tysheed “Bear” Dixon at defensive end. Then we had Chris Hill and Zacchaeus White at the D-tackle spots today, both of them played JV last year and they’re giving us a great look right now.”

Starting senior defensive end Moore and junior, Dixon, both said their goal for this season was to be the best defensive end in 2-A football, while Hill wanted to rack up the most tackles on the team.

Each of the three, Moore, Dixon and Hill, were focused on meeting the same weight room milestone.

“I want to get into the 1,000-pound club,” Moore said.

His teammates echoed that statement, and Hill explained what it took to be member of the 1,000-pound club.

“You got three main lifts — squat, bench and power clean. When you add your maxes all together it has to be over a 1,000 pounds,” Hill said.

All three linemen look to reserve a spot in the 1,000-pound club before the start of the regular season.

“We’re pretty sophisticated up front,” Blank said. “We have a lot of different alignments and stunt calls. We want to be able to get into even and odd (fronts), run our angles, do some different loops, and get into some zone-blitz concepts where we drop our (defensive) ends. We like our ends to be almost like outside linebackers sometimes. … We have some flexibility to kind of do whatever we want, as long as they can handle it mentally.”

The players enjoy being able to do multiple things up front, and are aware of how versatile they have to be on the defensive front.

“I’ll do anything to help the team win,” Dixon said about being multiple on the defensive line.

Dixon’s teammate on the line’s interior followed up with a goal he says is unanimous throughout the locker room.

“We’re trying to win a state championship,” Hill said.