Robservations: Making do with what you’ve got
Every football team, on every level, has its ups and downs.
We’ve seen the Dallas Cowboys rise to the level of “America’s Team,” and we’ve seen them when they couldn’t beat their own cheerleading squad. We’ve seen Riverdale High School squads that were pushovers a decade ago become one of the dominant forces in the state.
No one can pinpoint one single reason why teams take these uphill and downhill turns. It’s just football, and it’s just the way things always have been and always are.
But here at Warren County, no one will argue that the high school program’s downhill turn has been a long, deep plummet.
On the other end of the spectrum, however, you have the success that’s being found once again at Warren County Middle School — where the Pioneers have won two in a row and, by all indications, are on their way to their third straight successful season.
No, they don’t regularly have to contend with 250-pound linemen. No, they aren’t forced to play traditional state powers during the course of their schedule. But they win. And in Warren County, a win is a win.
You’ve got to admire the middle school version of the Pioneers for pulling off those wins, and I’ll tell you why. They do more, while working with and expecting less, than most of the other programs I’ve seen in my near decade in this business.
They have their own stadium, but it’s not really theirs. It’s shared with the high school, through no fault of either program, so when the big boys need to use the locker room or game field, they do exactly that.
They have their own weight room, where they make do with antiquated equipment to get themselves in the best shape they possibly can before their season begins.
They even have their own “practice facility,” if you can keep a straight face while calling the flood plain at the bottom of Rebel Hill a “facility.”
But you never get any complaints from the team, the staff, or the administration. I’m not saying they don’t make any complaints, I’m just saying you never hear them.
All you do get out of the program are wins — like the one you can read about to the right of this space. And that’s why, even if they don’t win another game this season, the WCMS football program has to be commended.
They make the best of the players, equipment, facilities and staff they have, and they’ve taken a team that just a few years ago couldn’t compete, and turned it into a contender.
On the plus side for the varsity program, however, the talent that helped accomplish that turnaround is growing up.
Players like Jevon Ramsey, Mikey Perkins and Nick Cantrell are beginning to show their stuff on the varsity level. While still young, and still learning the speed and intensity of the varsity game, Pioneer fans are seeing that trio, and their counterparts who came up through the WCMS ranks, earning their spots with the big team.
It can’t be long before all the success they found on Tuesday and Thursday nights, as middle-schoolers just a couple of falls ago, is found on Fridays with their varsity counterparts.
And surely it can’t be long before the turnaround that the WCMS program has experienced evolves into a reversal of the high school Pioneers’ fortunes.
It just can’t be long — can it?