VOORHEESVILLE — The off-season commitment of Voorheesville’s football players and their attention to detail in the preseason has impressed Head Coach Joe Sapienza. He believes that the Blackbirds are prepared to be a dominant team.

“This is the year,” Sapienza said after practice ended on Monday. “We expect to put it together.”

Struggling against top competition in 2013, Voorheesville is hoping to use its experienced roster as an advantage this season. Out of 26 players, 24 returned from last year, and 18 are seniors.

“We’re ready to win,” senior running back Matt Feller said. “We’ve been getting after it for a while.”

Sapienza has noticed more of a team effort, and how every player has made an improvement. Since the players now have more football intelligence, the Voorheesville coaches have added strategic elements to the offense and defense.

“We wanted to give them more responsibilities,” Sapienza said. “We feel pretty good.”

Voorheesville went 4-4 last year. Sapienza said that the team was unprepared for its 39-to-19 loss to Corinth in the Class C quarterfinals. The biggest difference in 2014 is the urgency that he senses from the players.

“This is their only opportunity to get it done,” said Sapienza on Monday. “They know that this is the last time they’ll be playing together, so anything they accomplish has to happen now. There is no next year.”

Looking at tape from Voorheesville’s final game against Mechanicville last year, Sapienza saw the Birds’ running game being shut down by a loaded defensive front; the linebackers were closing gaps on the blitz. To open up some running lanes this year, Sapienza instituted some inside zone reads.

“The running backs read the linebackers,” said Sapienza. “They do this a lot in the NFL. We can neutralize the opponent by keeping tabs on their linebackers.”

Voorheesville has always used a power rushing attack; the zone reads will give it some finesse. Senior quarterback Robert Denman is also comfortable with running the ball, and uses the West Coast offense — characterized by short, horizontal passing routes in lieu of running plays — which may lead to some big plays.

“He can execute as well as any quarterback in Section 2,” Sapienza said of Denman, who threw a few bullets at Monday’s practice.

Feller told The Enterprise that the quarterback, the receivers, the running backs, the tight ends, and the offensive line are all on the same page as far as knowing each others’ tendencies and timing. “He’s mature and trustworthy,” Feller said of Denman.

Senior Alex Paigo said that no one on Voorheesville works harder than Denman, or sets a better example.

“He’s been overlooking the team,” senior Alex Minnick said of his quarterback. “He makes people work.”

In football, there are only 15 to 20 running plays that exist, Sapienza said, but each play has a series of different formations. “We’ll use three tight ends sometimes because we have three good tight ends,” he said. “Then we’ll use no tight ends because we have good receivers.”

A deeper playbook might give Voorheesville more opportunities to score, and be more creative. Feller says it depends on how the defense lines up at any given time.

“Defenses aren’t going to know what we’re doing,” Minnick added. “They have to keep guessing.”

In the past, Voorheesville was more limited on defense. “Now, we want to have the perfect coverage for whatever the offensive formation is,” Sapienza said. “Our guys are going to know; it’ll be real specific and unique. We’ve toyed with this stuff — four deep, two deep — before, but never fully did it.”

Running 30 plays on defense at a recent scrimmage, Sapienza said that not one coverage was blown. “Usually, in a scrimmage, you see blown coverages all over,” he said. “We felt good about that.”

Voorheesville opens the season with Holy Trinity — a combination of Catholic Central, Saratoga Catholic, and Bishop Gibbons — at Catholic Central High School on Friday at 7 p.m. Now with 17 teams, Class C was restructured from two divisions to three. The Blackbirds play in the Class C Central with Holy Trinity, Mechanicville, Stillwater, Tamarac, and Watervliet.

Holy Trinity is an “unknown entity,” Sapienza said, so, he’s a little anxious.

“We’re one team with one goal,” Paigo said. “We know the deal.”