PINETOWN — There’s a significant amount of optimism for Northside football, which recently began spring practice. The Panthers are coming off a disappointing two-win season that saw them go 0-5 in the 1-A Coastal Plains Conference.

However, the team was a young one. There’s no sense of rebuilding. Head coach Keith Boyd is instead looking forward to returning the vast majority of last year’s squad, which has another year of experience on its résumé.

“We were so darn young,” he said. “We only lost two starters. We pretty much got most of our lettermen back with a year of experience under their belts. That is if everyone comes and stays healthy. We had health issues last year.

“If we can get everyone back in those same spots with more experience — them being juniors and seniors instead of sophomores and juniors — then we hope we’ll be better. We expect to be better, anyways.”

It immediately made a difference in the way Boyd and his coaching staff approached the spring. Having so many players back meant they could jump into some of the more technical aspects of the game without having to spend as much time fine-tuning fundamentals.

That is especially valuable at the 1-A level. It’s not too often that a team is able to have schematic continuity from one year to the next.

“Being 1-A, a lot of times from year to year, you have to restructure what you do offensively and defensively,” Boyd said. “With those same groups of kids coming back, we feel like we can keep the same systems. We’ll tweak a few things here and there. By redoing what we did last year, we’re further ahead because they remember a lot of what we did and how we did it.”

Boyd added that he plans to continue running a read offense with some winged-T nuances. He believes Northside’s success on offense this year will come from perfecting the way it attacked last season while also adding some new wrinkles to it.

“We’re just going to get good at the read and the option and the double dive,” he said. “We’re going to mix some other formations in there. We’re going to try and spread you a little bit. We’ve got a lot of wrinkles because we’ve got the personnel to do it with.”

Assuming the numbers remain strong and injuries don’t plague the Panthers, Boyd doesn’t anticipate having too many two-way players. He’d like to start 11 players on offense and a different 11 on defense. That’s not common of a 1-A team, or even a 2-A team, for that matter. The idea is to use depth to wear down the opposition.

“That’s where our depth will come from,” Boyd said. “We’re hoping to get 20 to 22 kids on the field. We think that’s going to help us stay fresh. Ultimately, in the third or fourth quarter, you’ll see the stamina come to be a plus for us.”