HS & MS football journal
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Writing school history..... state championship bound
Pirates win, Pirates win, Pirates win! They took down Glenville at Clyde stadium (JBs alum field) and play Indian Valley for the D4 championship at Tom Benson HOF stadium. Hoping to have the chance to hand off the school's only state championship trophy to the next ones in line, been a solid 25yr run. Let's go Pirates!
Won't lie, our Edison team handing them their only loss this year would make it the perfect scenario. Let's go football Gods, put this script in motion!
Won't lie, our Edison team handing them their only loss this year would make it the perfect scenario. Let's go football Gods, put this script in motion!
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Ummmm......
Inside Hillsdale's second-half turnaround in Div. VII state semifinal win over Danville
A closer look inside Hillsdale's second-half turnaround in their state semifinal win past Danville.
www.times-gazette.com
Bigcountry40
Member
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- 137
Happy for your school but better chance of Christ coming back then Marion losing, Marion could win d6 and d5.
Hillsdale turned dreams to reality with state final appearence
Despite the outcome of Friday morning's title bout, Hillsdale's 14 wins this year set a program record for wins in a season.
www.ashlandsource.com
Marion Local is impressive every year. Small School. Big football tradition. Those farm boys can probably beat many small college teams. Lol
Pirates at 7:30pm tonight against Indian Valley, going to be a good one! Bring home #2 fellas!!
sanduskyregister.com
GAME PREVIEW: Perkins' state title within reach
Perkins will play Indian Valley for the Division-IV championship on Saturday night.
22-22 going into the half! I love Indian Valley's running game, crazy good duo in the backfield, and the Pirates are starting to spread them out with deep passes and hitting key receivers. Gonna be a barn burner I believe!
14-14 going into the half. I love Indian Valley's running game, crazy good duo in the backfield, and the Pirates are starting to spread them out with deep passes and hitting key receivers. Gonna be a barn burner I believe!
37-36 Indian Valley for the win. A fumble and dropped pass were the game changers of the game. Awesome battle for 4 qtrs of championship level football!
From a well respected coach/teacher in the area:
Ty Roth
Author and Educator
Menu +expandedcollapsed
First off, congratulations to all of the players, coaches, and supporters of the Perkins Pirate football team on your remarkable and truly historic season.
Thirty four years ago, I was the offensive coordinator for the St. Mary’s football team that lost in the the state finals. Although under different circumstances, it was a heartbreaking loss in which we play-by-excruciating-play watched a fourteen point lead disappear in the final thirteen minutes to ultimately lose by a score of 20 – 17.
I was around Coach Santoro’s age at the time. Under Coach Hammond, we were a tightknit group of players, coaches, and fans, battletested and full of belief in ourselves. Unlike you, we were given very little chance to win by anyone outside of our locker room, but we were all too young and probably too stupid to believe anything but that we would win and be State Champions.
1990 SMCC State Final Coaching Staff at a 30 year reunion. Coach Widmer, myself, Head Coach Hammond, and Coach Kohler. Missing from the photo is defensive coordinator Mike Opfer.
I’m pretty sure I cried when the last second ticked off the clock. I know I threw a temper tantrum in the press box, which — I thank God — nobody but my fellow assistant coaches, my brothers, witnessed. To this day the postgame remains mostly a blur. I think I eventually gathered my composure and made it into the locker room to commiserate with my Panther football family, but I have no clear memories of it. I know I struggled to look anyone in the eyes, feeling that I had let everyone down and it was my fault, feeling that I had missed something, feeling I should have done something differently. I couldn’t eat for many hours after that game. Somehow, I even lost a shoe somewhere between Massillon and our locker room back in Sandusky.
We all had watched countless sports movies in which the underdog, like we were, pulls off the miracle victory, and we knew that would be us that day. We all had poured so much time, energy, and hope into our preparation that losing was an unthinkable outcome, and it honestly never crossed my mind prior to that last second’s ticking away. To this day, I have never watched the final quarter of that game. It still hurts too much to think about how close we came and how just one of a few key plays — just one play — going any other way than it did would have resulted in us being state champions and me sporting a State Championship ring as I type this.
By now, I’m sure you’ve heard or shared some of the many sports platitudes we use to apply healing salve to the psychic wounds that a painful loss like yours has opened, such as “We didn’t lose; we just ran out of time”; another is “The sun will come up tomorrow”; or “Time will heal the pain you’re feeling in this moment.” These sayings and the people who share them are well-intentioned. Sadly, none of them are true, at least not entirely.
As for not losing, that’s just false. We live in a society — for better or worse — in which we keep score, celebrate winners, and immediately forget about second place finishers. The sun will continue to come up obviously, but it will never shine quite so brightly as it would have had the score been different. If it had, even on the sunless days of your future, memories of your victory and your status as a state champion would have helped you through them. And as for time healing your pain, it doesn’t, not completely. Those wounds you’re feeling today will get better, but they will scar and never heal completely. The loss of the game will remain with you like a phantom limb that still aches an amputee years after its loss.
These are hard truths that nobody shared with me at the time of our defeat. They require harsh words that may be too difficult for those who love you to deliver. Rather, they require someone like me to share: someone who has been where you are today and as someone who has admired your success but is removed from your program and the tempest of emotions with which you are currently wrestling.
Here’s my advice. Watch the game tape, the sooner the better. And as the years pass, re-watch it with some regularity. As the saying goes, “Denial ain’t just a river in Africa.” Denial is a poison with no antidote other than having the courage to face and accept the truth in order to minimize whatever damage it has already done to your insides. Trust me, ignoring the pain will not make it go away. The truth is that we both could have won our longed for state championships. Hell, maybe we should have won, but we didn’t. We lost. That’s something we both just have to carry. Life is like that. We have shit we just . . . have . . . to . . . carry.
Sports, like many experiences in life, are the proverbial double edged sword, a bit like love actually. Few things will bring you as much pure, unadulterated joy as sports or love can deliver, and you have just experienced a season — several seasons actually — of success after success, one high after another nearly to the point of addiction. A difficult reality is that the higher we climb the ladders of success, the greater and more damaging the fall from such heights will be. But you can and will pick yourself up, forever bruised but also forever wiser and prepared to face future disappointments that will most likely come. Find other ladders worthy of the effort and climb.
I know it’s hokey, but this song hits the nail on the proverbial head.
Few experiences in life will rip your heart out like the losses sports inevitably force anyone who chooses to participate in them to feel — just as the loss of loved ones do. The important thing to remember is that both the choice to participate in sports and to love anyone/anything IS A CHOICE. It’s one that I encourage you to keep making despite the inevitability of losses. The other choice is to do nothing, to love nothing, which is no way to live. In any objective analysis, which is difficult for you to perform right now, the benefits you have accrued as a player, coach, or fan far outweigh the losses.
Do your best not to allow the disappointing outcome of the final game overshadow all of the many moments of togetherness you have experienced as a team, school, and community. All these years later, whether as a player or a coach, whenever I reflect on those days, I rarely think of — hell, I can hardly remember — the particulars of most of the games we won or lost. What I do remember and most cherish are the moments spent with teammates or fellow coaches in locker rooms, on the practice field, at team feeds, etc. Even more importantly, I challenge you not to let this year’s accomplishment be the highlight of your lifetime. Don’t get stuck in these glory days. Let it be one of the many achievements of your life but not THE achievement.
Be proud that you have made proud and united a community at a time when division seems to dominate the day. You have put Perkins Township on the map for Ohioans to learn that it is more than a place they must drive through on their way to Cedar Point or the islands. You have met and reset a standard for future Pirate football players and teams to aspire to just as the 2004 Pirates did for you. Most importantly, you have exemplified and proven the value of hard work, toughness, resilience, and teamwork.
That’s the end of my consolation letter. I can only hope you appreciate that it comes from lived experience and a place of respect, admiration, and well wishes. Now, although it’s three o’clock in the morning, I have a final quarter of a thirty-four-year-old game tape to watch. If I could only remember where I put that VCR.
Ty Roth
Author and Educator
Menu +expandedcollapsed
An Open Letter to Perkins Pirate Football Nation:
First off, congratulations to all of the players, coaches, and supporters of the Perkins Pirate football team on your remarkable and truly historic season.
Thirty four years ago, I was the offensive coordinator for the St. Mary’s football team that lost in the the state finals. Although under different circumstances, it was a heartbreaking loss in which we play-by-excruciating-play watched a fourteen point lead disappear in the final thirteen minutes to ultimately lose by a score of 20 – 17.
I was around Coach Santoro’s age at the time. Under Coach Hammond, we were a tightknit group of players, coaches, and fans, battletested and full of belief in ourselves. Unlike you, we were given very little chance to win by anyone outside of our locker room, but we were all too young and probably too stupid to believe anything but that we would win and be State Champions.
I’m pretty sure I cried when the last second ticked off the clock. I know I threw a temper tantrum in the press box, which — I thank God — nobody but my fellow assistant coaches, my brothers, witnessed. To this day the postgame remains mostly a blur. I think I eventually gathered my composure and made it into the locker room to commiserate with my Panther football family, but I have no clear memories of it. I know I struggled to look anyone in the eyes, feeling that I had let everyone down and it was my fault, feeling that I had missed something, feeling I should have done something differently. I couldn’t eat for many hours after that game. Somehow, I even lost a shoe somewhere between Massillon and our locker room back in Sandusky.
We all had watched countless sports movies in which the underdog, like we were, pulls off the miracle victory, and we knew that would be us that day. We all had poured so much time, energy, and hope into our preparation that losing was an unthinkable outcome, and it honestly never crossed my mind prior to that last second’s ticking away. To this day, I have never watched the final quarter of that game. It still hurts too much to think about how close we came and how just one of a few key plays — just one play — going any other way than it did would have resulted in us being state champions and me sporting a State Championship ring as I type this.
By now, I’m sure you’ve heard or shared some of the many sports platitudes we use to apply healing salve to the psychic wounds that a painful loss like yours has opened, such as “We didn’t lose; we just ran out of time”; another is “The sun will come up tomorrow”; or “Time will heal the pain you’re feeling in this moment.” These sayings and the people who share them are well-intentioned. Sadly, none of them are true, at least not entirely.
As for not losing, that’s just false. We live in a society — for better or worse — in which we keep score, celebrate winners, and immediately forget about second place finishers. The sun will continue to come up obviously, but it will never shine quite so brightly as it would have had the score been different. If it had, even on the sunless days of your future, memories of your victory and your status as a state champion would have helped you through them. And as for time healing your pain, it doesn’t, not completely. Those wounds you’re feeling today will get better, but they will scar and never heal completely. The loss of the game will remain with you like a phantom limb that still aches an amputee years after its loss.
These are hard truths that nobody shared with me at the time of our defeat. They require harsh words that may be too difficult for those who love you to deliver. Rather, they require someone like me to share: someone who has been where you are today and as someone who has admired your success but is removed from your program and the tempest of emotions with which you are currently wrestling.
Here’s my advice. Watch the game tape, the sooner the better. And as the years pass, re-watch it with some regularity. As the saying goes, “Denial ain’t just a river in Africa.” Denial is a poison with no antidote other than having the courage to face and accept the truth in order to minimize whatever damage it has already done to your insides. Trust me, ignoring the pain will not make it go away. The truth is that we both could have won our longed for state championships. Hell, maybe we should have won, but we didn’t. We lost. That’s something we both just have to carry. Life is like that. We have shit we just . . . have . . . to . . . carry.
Sports, like many experiences in life, are the proverbial double edged sword, a bit like love actually. Few things will bring you as much pure, unadulterated joy as sports or love can deliver, and you have just experienced a season — several seasons actually — of success after success, one high after another nearly to the point of addiction. A difficult reality is that the higher we climb the ladders of success, the greater and more damaging the fall from such heights will be. But you can and will pick yourself up, forever bruised but also forever wiser and prepared to face future disappointments that will most likely come. Find other ladders worthy of the effort and climb.
I know it’s hokey, but this song hits the nail on the proverbial head.
Few experiences in life will rip your heart out like the losses sports inevitably force anyone who chooses to participate in them to feel — just as the loss of loved ones do. The important thing to remember is that both the choice to participate in sports and to love anyone/anything IS A CHOICE. It’s one that I encourage you to keep making despite the inevitability of losses. The other choice is to do nothing, to love nothing, which is no way to live. In any objective analysis, which is difficult for you to perform right now, the benefits you have accrued as a player, coach, or fan far outweigh the losses.
Do your best not to allow the disappointing outcome of the final game overshadow all of the many moments of togetherness you have experienced as a team, school, and community. All these years later, whether as a player or a coach, whenever I reflect on those days, I rarely think of — hell, I can hardly remember — the particulars of most of the games we won or lost. What I do remember and most cherish are the moments spent with teammates or fellow coaches in locker rooms, on the practice field, at team feeds, etc. Even more importantly, I challenge you not to let this year’s accomplishment be the highlight of your lifetime. Don’t get stuck in these glory days. Let it be one of the many achievements of your life but not THE achievement.
Be proud that you have made proud and united a community at a time when division seems to dominate the day. You have put Perkins Township on the map for Ohioans to learn that it is more than a place they must drive through on their way to Cedar Point or the islands. You have met and reset a standard for future Pirate football players and teams to aspire to just as the 2004 Pirates did for you. Most importantly, you have exemplified and proven the value of hard work, toughness, resilience, and teamwork.
That’s the end of my consolation letter. I can only hope you appreciate that it comes from lived experience and a place of respect, admiration, and well wishes. Now, although it’s three o’clock in the morning, I have a final quarter of a thirty-four-year-old game tape to watch. If I could only remember where I put that VCR.