MINERSVILLE
It wasn’t that long ago that Shenandoah Valley at Minersville was a marquee game on the high school football schedule.
Four years ago, in 2011, the Blue Devils and Miners met twice, the second time in the District 11 Class A semifinals. Shenandoah Valley pulled out a dramatic 25-24 victory to advance to the finals, where the Devils lost to Pius X.
Since then, however, both programs have had some hard times.
After a 7-4 mark in 2012, Shenandoah Valley has gone just 3-22 since, finishing 1-9 in 2013, 1-10 last season and 1-3 through four games this season. Last Friday’s 13-6 win over Panther Valley ended an 18-game Anthracite Football League losing streak.
Minersville, meanwhile, appears headed for a fourth straight losing season. The Miners were 4-6 in 2012, 1-9 in 2013 and 3-7 last year.
At 0-4 this season, Pat Mason’s club will look for its first win of the season tonight when the Miners host the Blue Devils at 7 p.m. at Veterans Memorial Stadium in the program’s annual Cancer Awareness Game.
Like every scholastic sport, high school football teams go through cycles. There are down years, then up years, then down years. It varies from program to program, and usually revolves around the number of players in a particular grade.
But how do small schools like Shenandoah Valley and Minersville escape the “losing culture” that comes with having rough seasons? How do they avoid getting into a rut that produces 3-4-5-6 losing seasons in a row?
Some of Schuylkill County’s small schools, like Marian, Schuylkill Haven, Tri-Valley and Williams Valley, have built solid programs that have maintained winning traditions. They may have a bad season every once in a while, but are a perennial playoff contender at the District 11 or Eastern Conference level.
Others, however, like Panther Valley, Mahanoy Area and Nativity, have struggled to consistently produce winning teams.
Winless this season, Panther Valley’s last winning season was 2009, when it reached the District 11 Class AA semis. The Panthers are 9-45 since.
Nativity (0-4) has had just one winning season since 2006, going 6-5 in 2011. Since the start of the 2007 season, the Green Wave are 28-58.
Mahanoy Area seems to have things figured out. Already 3-1 this season, the Golden Bears have made the postseason in four of the last five years, winning Eastern Conference titles in 2010 and 2011.
Prior to that, however, the Golden Bears were a staggering 13-68 from 2002-09.
What are some of the factors that contribute to the small schools’ struggles? What are some of the obstacles they have to overcome?
What are some things they can do to pull themselves out of the “losing culture” and put together a winning season?
We took a look:
The Numbers Game
There isn’t a program that’s immune to having a bad season, regardless of class.
Locally, Class AAA Jim Thorpe had back-to-back 1-9 seasons in 2011-12. Class AAA Shamokin was 0-10 in 2013. Class AAA Pottsville was 0-10 last year and enters tonight’s game with Exeter on a 15-game losing streak.
The difference between those big-school teams, however, and the Class A schools in Schuylkill County is numbers. The Class AAA programs, with more student-athletes to choose from, are able to bounce back quicker due to a bigger roster.
Blue Mountain, for example, lost 20 seniors from last year’s Eastern Conference Class AAA championship squad. Yet the Eagles have the numbers to field a competitive club this season that is 3-1.
Pine Grove, on the other hand,
has been decimated by graduation losses the past two seasons. This year’s 0-4 mark in which the Class AA Cardinals have scored just 10 points is the result.
“It’s a cycle thing,” Minersville’s Mason said. “Sometimes you end up playing freshmen when you’re not supposed to be playing freshmen. You have to play kids that you know aren’t ready but have to because of the numbers factor.”
For small schools to be successful, they must get every available body in the school that can contribute to come out for the sport. That’s not just football, but basketball, wrestling and baseball, too.
For most schools, a winning season could come down to one or two kids not being on the team.
Winning programs get those kids “on the fence” to come out for football. When the losing seasons start to stack up, it gives those kids “on the fence” a reason to stay at home or play something else.
“When you have a couple of losing seasons, you lose that excitement,” Shenandoah Valley coach Kevin Bolinsky said. “You lose athletes, sometimes the better athletes. They don’t come out.
“You lose bodies for the scout team. You don’t get a good look Monday through Thursday, and then the speed is a lot faster Friday.
“When you’re on the losing side, you lose a lot of excitement in the school. If you can turn it around, you build excitement and enthusiasm.”
Hampering those numbers are the greater amount of options male student-athletes have in today’s society.
When Shenandoah Valley and Minersville were dominating the old Eastern Conference in the 1980s, soccer, travel baseball and video games didn’t exist. Family values were stronger, and it was often a family tradition to play football.
The feeder programs in Schuylkill County have remained strong, but the retention of those athletes once they reach high school has dropped dramatically due to the other options they have.
“Kids are different these days,” Mason said. “Everybody wants to be successful, part of a winning team. It’s hard, it’s a challenge to get kids up when you know it’s a rebuilding year and the deck is stacked against you.
“Playing the teams we play, not having success, some kids say ‘Hey, what do I want to do? Do I want to try something else?’”
Former Pottsville coach Kevin Keating, in an address at the preseason Schuylkill County Football Coaches Association Media Day several years ago, warned the area coaches about the impact fall baseball and specialization might have on high school football.
Numbers are down across the state, at every level. Teams no longer have 60-70 players on their roster. If a Class A school gets 40-45 players, the coaching staff considers it a success.
“I’m a firm believer in three-sport athletes,” Mason said. “The best football players are three-sport athletes. When I was a kid, you played every sport. It produces the best kids. I’m a big advocate of that.
“Kids today are different. They want to be a part of something successful. There are 5-10 kids on the fence every year. In this age of specialization, you never know.”
Schedules
The expansion of the Anthracite Football League from its original Anthracite 8 to today’s 11-team league has hampered small schools like Shenandoah Valley, Minersville, Panther Valley, Mahanoy Area and Schuylkill Haven.
Instead of having teams like Tri-Valley and Williams Valley on their schedule, the Class A schools in the AFL have had to play Class AAA Blue Mountain and Class AAA Lehighton the past two seasons.
That arrangement will change next year when Pottsville joins the AFL and the league breaks into two divisions. The six-team, small-school division will have a five-game league schedule that features five non-conference games.
And while there are plusses and minuses to that arrangement, it allows the small schools a chance to schedule more Class A and AA schools.
“One thing that’s really changed in this culture is the down years,” Mason said. “Instead of finishing 4-6, it’s now possible you could lose all 10. It’s a lot tougher playing Lehighton, Jim Thorpe, North Schuylkill. It’s hard to get any continuity going.”
Building a schedule that is conducive to having success on the field and off it is imperative toward building a successful program.
In the late 1990s, after several losing seasons, Blue Mountain switched its schedule to include more Class AAA schools of a somewhat lesser caliber. The move, which coincided with a new coach and an influx of talent, produced six straight winning seasons and several championships.
Two years ago, after a decade in the Berks Football League, the Eagles did it again, joining the Anthracite Football League. The move benefitted in two ways: Blue Mountain went 10-2 and won the Eastern Conference title, and packed its visiting bleachers on a regular basis with games against local clubs instead of Berks teams that didn’t travel well.
The move to the AFL also re-established some local rivalries and increased interest in the sport in the school.
In Nativity’s case, their schedule in the 1990s and early 2000s included six games against schools that no longer exist or no longer field a football team — Cardinal Brennan, Lourdes, Bishop Hafey, Bishop O’Reilly, Bishop O’Hara, Pius X. The league the Green Wave competed in — the All-American Conference — also went from nine teams in 2006 to just four in 2015.
That has left Nativity searching for games and often playing teams from outside the area. It’s hard to build rivalries and enthusiasm week in and week out for games when no one where the school you’re playing is from.
Consistency,
Continuity
How does a small school avoid strings of losing seasons? Consistency and continuity are two places to start.
If you take a look at and compare the area’s successful programs in various sports, there are a couple of constants:
• A head coach that has been there a long time, either as the head coach, or as an assistant prior to becoming the head coach.
• The program does things the same way every year, all the time, every time.
• The program stresses the importance of off-season conditioning and training and team bonding.
When those three elements are present, the players and coaches know what to expect out of each other, and the product on the field, court, pool, mat or track is usually a successful one.
“You have to remember what your core values are,” said Schuylkill Haven coach Mike Farr, who has been the Hurricanes’ head coach since 2005 and was an assistant coach for 20 years prior to that. “As long as you have a core base of values, no matter what happens, if you have something that works, you have a baseline to judge yourself on. For me, it’s academics first, community second, then football.
“The trap that coaches get caught up into is listening to the ‘experts’ around them and start second-guessing the program,” Farr continued. “At the times you’re in trouble, the times you’re struggling, it’s really important to have a good foundation for your program.”
Jim Thorpe’s Mark Rosenberger agrees. In his 18th year with the Olympians, Rosenberger has compiled a 108-74 mark with just three losing seasons.
After the back-to-back 1-9 campaigns, Rosenberger said his team went back to what made them successful.
The Olympians went back to stressing their “Red Swarm” defense and focusing on running the ball and controlling the line of scrimmage.
“We re-emphasized the core values that our program was built upon: a team and family first attitude, work ethic, discipline, a fundamentally sound team that emphasizes defense first,” Rosenberger said. “During the two losing seasons there were many games that we scored 30 or more points, but we gave up more points.
“We abandoned the no-huddle philosophy that helped our offense score but placed our defense on the field for most of the game.
“So the philosophical change in coaching was to more of a running style, huddle-it-up offense that controlled the clock with the re-emphasis on playing fundamentally sound defense that prevents big plays.”
The consistency relies a lot on the coaching staff.
Several small schools that have struggled recently — Panther Valley, Shenandoah Valley are two examples — have had several different coaches over a short stretch of time. Each of those coaches brought different schemes, different philosophies and different methods that some times didn’t fit the personnel or program.
Building a winning program starts at the top. Finding the right leader is key.
“You have to find the leader that the kids will believe in,” Farr said. “Someone who can develop the program, get sponsorship from the community. It’s football, administration and community. Without one of those, you can’t be successful ... unless you have tons of talent.”