Pillar of strength
Chandler sets bar for Panthers
Chase Chandler hopes to be a part of changing the Siloam Springs football culture, and he’s doing it one pound at a time.
Chandler gave his teammates something to cheer about during a July workout this past summer when he deadlifted 500 pounds. Video of the moment was captured by Siloam Springs assistant coach Jonathan Johnson and later shared on social media, showing Chandler successfully executing the lift and being mobbed by his teammates.
“It was definitely a surreal moment,” said Chandler, a 5-10, 222-pound senior. “That’s the most I’ve ever done, by far.”
Chandler said summer workouts are structured to where athletes get the opportunity at the end to do a couple of reps of
“however much you can do.”
“I was doing pretty good that day on deadlifting,” Chandler recalls. “Coach (Brandon) Craig came up to me and said, ‘Hey, spotlight?’ I said ‘Yes, sir. I think I can do it.’ He said, ‘Alright, throw her on 450.’”
Chandler loaded up the bar with 450 pounds and Craig called the Panthers in to watch.
Chandler did the 450 lift and Craig called for more. This time, 485. No problem.
“That’s when coach Johnson came over and the whole team was there,” Chandler said. “No one else was lifting. It was just me, and I was ready.”
Chandler approached the bar and lifted 500.
“It was super stagnant at first, but then everyone was encouraging me, which made me want to lift more and I got it,” he said. “I let it down and everyone was pumping me up.”
For a program that hasn’t had much to cheer about on the football field in the last two years, Chandler’s lift was a moment filled with excitement and optimism.
“It goes back to the culture thing,” said first-year coach Brandon Craig. “We’re trying to create excitement and energy and something about your program that kids want to be a part of. When you have something like that happen, it brings them all together. It’s just another way to unify the team.”
It’s no secret the Panthers (1-0), who host Harrison on Friday at Panther Stadium, are leaning on seniors like Chandler — the Will linebacker — to help turn the program around.
Chandler got bit by the weightlifting bug between his freshman and sophomore years.
“I knew I wanted to try and play on Friday nights,” Chandler said. “Coach (Marc) Jones, who coached at the time at linebacker, really encouraged me. He said if you want to play on Friday nights, you’ve got to be bigger and stronger.”
Chandler said at the time, he was trying to lose weight and guessed he was around 190 pounds and 5 foot, 7 inches tall.
“So from then, I started putting on muscle weight, working out all the time,” he said. “That’s when I started working outside of practice. I ended up getting a bench rack at my house, and I would bench before I would go to bed and lift all the time at home. I would do two workouts a day, and that’s when I really decided I want to get strong.”
It paid off big for Chandler as he’s seen time on the field all three years with the varsity program.
Chandler is a three-year starter for Siloam Springs and was the team’s leading tackler last season with 66 total tackles.
“I think he has good instincts as a linebacker,” Craig said. “He’s really done a good job of being coachable and learning what we want him to do as far as technique and reading and schemes and things like that. He’s done a good job of picking that up, and he’s a leader on and off the field. The kids look up to him, not just in the weight room but in the classroom and on the field as well. He’s just a guy they can definitely use as a role model and someone they want to aspire to be. He brings a lot of things to the table for us.”
Defensive coordinator Cole Harriman praised Chandler’s work ethic and leadership on the field.
“He’s an extremely vocal player, which is huge,” Chandler said. “He’s kind of the heart of our defense as far as being vocal and emotional.”
Chandler saw extensive playing time as a sophomore, playing tight end on offense and safety on defense. Last season, the Panthers moved him to linebacker, where he had an All-Conference junior season.
This season, the Panthers wanted to move Chandler exclusively to the defensive side of the ball. However, he does come in short-yardage situations in the Panthers’ Rhino package.
He helped the Panthers punch in a touchdown by Kaiden Thrailkill on fourthand-goal from the 1-yard line in the Panthers’ 38-21 victory at Pryor, Okla., in their season opener last Friday.
Defensively, he assisted on seven tackles and tipped a pass that wound up being intercepted by Spenser Pippin.
“We got a lot of production out of our (defensive) unit Friday night, and (Chandler) was involved in a lot of those plays,” Harriman said. “Probably one of the best qualities he has, though, is he didn’t grade out the best Friday night as far as his technique and his footwork, but that’s something I feel like he wants to get better at. And he’s extremely coachable. He’s got a great relationship with his position coach, Coach (Tony) Coffey. He stays on both him and Matt (Avery) as far as their technique goes. I think he’s really responded to that.”
Underclassmen only need to look at Chandler’s battlescarred helmet, full of scratches and nicks, to realize the kind of player he is for the Panthers.
“It’s been refurbished this year, too,” Chandler said of his helmet.
Chandler is also heavily invested in the Panthers’ younger players, a part of a program-wide initiative to get older players mentoring younger players from the high school down to the junior high ranks.
“I’ve never been more intact with the sophomores and our younger classmen,” he said. “Inviting them to do stuff, hanging out with them, working out with them. I worked out with Jace Sutulovich, who’s a freshman, all summer long. He’s in my group. I mentored him. He’s a stud. We’re getting him to where he’s putting up more pounds than me, hopefully. Stuff like that, we’ve never done that before. It was always a divide between classes.”
Chandler is looking forward to a rematch Friday night with the Goblins, who torched Siloam Springs defensively last season 48-12 as the Goblins piled up 540 yards of offense and scored on their first seven possessions.
“Coach sent out the scouting report on Saturday,” he said. “Our main goal this week was listed as physicality. We’ve got to be way more physical. We showed glimpses of it last week, but physicality is what we lacked last year. We had no physicality, and (Harrison) owned the line of scrimmage. This week. we’re just going to be really physical. That’s the goal.”