Blended Football Family Takes the Field

RFH 2010, Featured Articles, HCS Sports

Sat, Aug 20, 2011

HCS/MCES become one on the football field this season.

Think of the impending local high school football season as Friday Night Lights meets Yours, Mine and Ours.

Friday Night Lights is the well-regarded TV drama about high school football in a small Texas town. Yours, Mine and Ours was a 1968 comedy about what happens when a widow with eight children marries a widower with 10 kids of his own.

That pretty much explains the merger of the HCS and Morrisville-Eaton Central School football programs ... minus the domestic drama of the TV show and the silliness of the Lucille Ball/Henry Fonda movie. Pre-season practices started this week for the blended varsity team and the modified players get started at the end of the month.

Four HCS players are part of the varsity squad:

Cody Browning, junior;
Max LaBrague, senior;
Jake Ballard, senior;
and Jared Winterrose, senior.

There are 17 HCS players signed up for the modified team; that compares to just seven last year.

The combined program comes a year after HCS went without a football team because it had too few players. Several seniors played elsewhere, but there was not enough time to get other varsity players integrated into the MECS team.

In the intervening year, a lot was done to ensure that this year's merged squad would have the best shot at success.

HCS Assistant Principal and Athletic Director Bill Dowsland said the two school have been in constant conversation since last August about how to field a blended team. He believes this will help this team succeed where other combined squads have failed.

"I think this will work because of our relationship with their staff," said Dowsland. "(MECS Athletic Director) Chris Doroshenko has been terrific to work with. The lines of communication between both schools and both administrations has been terrific."

That cooperation will extend to how the team looks this year. When they take the field, players will wear helmets with Hamilton's Emerald Knight logo on one side and MECS' on the other. They will wear the Warrior red and white uniforms at home and the HCS green and white on the road.

All home games will be played at MECS, but Dowsland said efforts are being made to play at least one game at Morrisville College's stadium.

The coaching staff of the merged team will have a new look as well. Neither MECS' Dan Martin of HCS' Joe LePage will run the show. (Martin resigned and is coaching at Morrisvile College again and LePage is part of the merged modified program.) Gary Morris (in photo below), who played for MECS in the late 1970s will be at the helm. He's assisted by former Morrisville College wrestling coach Mario Armstrong.

MECS phys ed teacher Eric Kent is the head coach of the modified program. he is assusted by LePage and Glenn Miner, who has coached at HCS in the past and teaches at MECS.

"This may be the best modified football coaching staff in all of Central New York," said Dowsland.

The HCS AD added that the number of players and depth of the coaching staff bodes well for the future of the blended program.

"The future of our program is very bright," said Dowsland.

The Warriors/Knights open the season Sept. 3 at Clinton, which just this year joined the Center State Conference.