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By TERRY NAU Sports editor High school football can be a humbling proving ground for teenage athletes and their coaches. The nature of young people at this age is to be enthusiastic, and that translates into setting high goals before the season begins. Most of those goals revolve around becoming a starting player, a key contributor, the type of football hero who turns heads in the hallways between classes. And there is always the ultimate team goal of making the playoffs and perhaps playing in the Super Bowl.
The Blackstone Valley had two Super Bowl championship teams in 2007. St. Raphael Academy achieved a perfect season, going 13-0 and winning the Division I Super Bowl with a blend of veteran players who put everything on the line each time they stepped on the field. Unfortunately, most of those players graduated.
Ponaganset High achieved a similar kind of success in Division III, winning its own Super Bowl and returning enough talent to think it could contend for a repeat title this season. Victories in their first five games only reinforced this belief for the Chieftains.
Now that we have reached November, the hard truths of competing successfully are coming into perspective for both teams. The rebuilding Saints, who hoped to make the playoffs, have instead lost four straight games and are out of the running. Coach Mike Sassi has turned to his quarterback of the future and is building for next year.
There is nothing wrong with the Saints’ program. It still runs the same way as it did last year, or five years ago. This is a football team that competes against much larger schools every season and realistically can only expect to win when it achieves a perfect blend of veteran players who are big enough and fast enough and smart enough to survive a schedule that includes large schools like Bishop Hendricken, La Salle Academy and East Providence.
The Saints are no different than Barrington, which won a Super Bowl several years ago, then fell on hard times before putting together a veteran team again this season that can compete in Division I. Small schools are not going to contend every year. It’s a fact of life at all levels of sports.
Even larger schools do not get a free pass to the playoffs. East Providence’s football team is going through a down season, despite its rich resources in a program that starts mass-producing football players at the junior high level.
Drop down a couple levels in Rhode Island football to Division III and witness the challenges Ponaganset High faced this season under head coach Tom Marcello, a man who offers no excuses when things are going poorly. Marcello’s Chieftains were unbeaten and riding high before learning last week they were would have to forfeit two wins (one a non-leaguer) for using an ineligible player.
That news came during a week in which Ponaganset would visit one of the division’s top two teams – an undefeated Tiverton squad that had overpowered most of its opponents over the first six weeks of the season. The Chieftains went down to Tiverton and played hard, giving up two early touchdowns and then battling to the end in a 14-6 defeat.
Marcello probably could have felt good about the way his team played on that difficult day … if he had the time to reflect on the nuances of the game. But football doesn’t work that way. Ponaganset’s players had to get back to practice and prepare for a Johnston team this past Saturday that could not be overlooked, despite its 2-3 record coming in. Sure enough, the Panthers played hard for the entire 48 minutes and pulled out a 22-21 win as time expired. Ponaganset’s players had learned another hard lesson about competition, this time on the field.
Things do not get any easier for Ponaganset. Marcello’s crew hosts a once-beaten Narragansett team on Saturday that has scored a league-high 194 points in six games. The Mariners lost to Tiverton 20-14 in their showdown game thus far. They also edged Johnston, 44-38, an indication that they can be scored upon. The Mariners are not unbeatable. And they represent a last chance for Ponaganset’s players to keep their playoff dream alive. The Chieftains would fall to 3-4 with another loss, virtually ending their chances for the league’s fourth and final playoff berth.
Nobody ever said life is fair. That’s one of the lessons we learn through sports. Ponaganset’s team is also learning something about overcoming bad breaks this season and never giving up. They’ve got a great coach who keeps reminding them each week to give their best.
My guess is Narragansett better come to play on Saturday because Ponaganset is going to be a very dangerous team, backed into a corner with nothing left to lose.
Right now, Tolman High appears to be the only local football team with a playoff berth firmly in its grasp. Lincoln High could clinch a berth if it beats Cumberland on Friday night. That’s a lot different than last year when SRA, Ponaganset, Tolman, Central Falls and Shea all qualified for the state playoffs.
Woonsocket should have made it last year, too, blowing its chance with a slow start. The Villa Novans started fast this season under new coach Carnell Henderson, winning four of their first five league games before falling flat last Saturday in a 26-7 loss to Warwick Vets. Woonsocket is now 4-2 in Division II-A and needs a win over a 5-1 Westerly team on Friday night to maintain its playoff chances.
It seems kind of strange for a 4-2 team to be fighting for its playoff existence. But Division II-A is stocked with five good teams this season … and one of them will not make the playoffs. West Warwick and Westerly are 5-1 right now while Tolman, Woonsocket and Warwick Veterans are 4-2. Since the Novans have lost to both Tolman and Warwick Vets, they lose any tiebreaker situations with those two schools.
Again, it’s up to Woonsocket to make its own breaks. Henderson has done a good job in his first year on the job but now he faces his toughest challenge, getting his players mentally ready to compete, on the road, against a strong opponent.
Woonsocket’s players can’t afford to put their heads down if something bad happens to them early in Friday’s game. As Ponaganset’s players learned against Johnston, you’ve got to play 48 minutes of hard football. Do that and there’s nothing left to regret once the game is over.
Give your best. That’s all a coach can ask his players to do. If these young men listen to their coach, winning and losing becomes a byproduct of competing.
Competing in sports isn’t about what’s fair, or who wins and who loses. It’s about something more than that, something deep inside that often doesn’t become clear until many years later. And if that sounds somewhat obscure, it’s meant to be that way, because the lessons a coach can impart often fall upon deaf ears until a teenage athlete grows up and begins to find his own way in the world.
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