CHOCOWINITY — Without a good offensive line, an offense can struggle. Regardless of how many playmakers are on the field, they need someone to help them find space. Southside’s offensive line aims to do that for their skill-position players this season.

Southside has a good amount of speed in the backfield and on the perimeter with their wide receivers; if they can find room to gallop, they’re plenty talented in the open field. The Seahawks return quite a few older guys on the offensive line to help out with that, but they don’t return a lot of game experience, according to head coach Jeff Carrow.

“We’re returning a lot of upperclassmen, but a lot of the guys didn’t have full starting positions last year,” Carrow said. “They’re still working in experience-wise, but they don’t have really as much game experience as years past. But they’re a good group, and they’re a fun group to coach.”

Carrow is coaching the offensive line again this year, and mentioned that their communication skills need to get fixed before the season.

“Communication is key,” Carrow said. “We had a good example today when they got a little tired and didn’t communicate, and the play messed up. The next play, they communicated, and it worked like gold. That’s a good example for them to see. If you communicate, you can work well as a unit.”

Senior offensive linemen Quinte Peele, Ricardo Waldron, Iverson Speller, Jonathan Galland and David Albritton in addition to juniors Tyshawn Ebron, Gregory McDonald and Keywon Moore will all likely see some playing time on the offensive line this season.

Peele, the vocal leader of the offensive line, said this year wouldn’t be easy since they lacked a little bit of size up front.

“We’re a pretty small team this year, so we’re going to have to really work hard towards what we need to get done,” Peele said. “Especially since we’re missing one of our key linemen in Colby (Curlings), so we’re going to work hard for him and keep doing what we’re supposed to do to make our offense better.”

Peele also mentioned that his favorite part of playing offensive tackle was run blocking.

“I like doing a lot of run blocking,” Peele said. “Because it’s like a lot of one-on-one blocking for myself, and I like that because I don’t really need a lot of help.”

Carrow proclaimed that he wants to see his offensive line compete for the entirety of every game.

“Right now, I just want them to play four quarters of football for us,” Carrow said. “Four quarters of football and don’t beat us. We got enough talent behind them that if they do their job, then we should be OK.”