The Cloverdale junior varsity football team began preparing for the 2017 football season in the heat of the summer with 25 athletes vying for playing time.
Once the passing leagues started and the first scrimmage came and went, that number had dwindled to 19, including two starting linemen playing football for the first time and a couple of others with just one year of playing experience.
There were 11 freshmen and eight sophomores.
Coach Rick Scaramella was concerned, to say the least. “I thought we would be lucky to win a game,’’ he said.
Wrong. Playing what Scaramella described as “iron man” football with many players not only playing on offense and defense but also multiple positions on both sides of the ball, the JV team finished with a winning record.
The 4-3-1 season, which included games postponed by heat and the devastating fires, surpassed even the 2-4-2 record of 2016.
“I was thoroughly surprised,’’ said Scaramella, who is the school district’s director of maintenance, operations and transportation and also is assisting with the baseball program.
The difference in the two years, Scaramella said, was in the fourth-quarter grittiness of this year’s team.
“Last year if we had played just three quarters we would have won every game,’’ he said. “We just got gassed.”
Scaramella said he thought the difference was the fact that the program was in its second year under head varsity coach Chad Talley.
“Last year was coach’s first year,’’ Scaramella said. “Everyone was learning the system. We spent a lot of time learning the system instead of conditioning. We were able to condition more this year.’’
The conditioning was necessary because the Eagles preferred a grind-it-out approach, opting to try to run teams into the ground rather than dazzle them with passing-game skills.
“Our quarterback (Shayne Turner) was better running, so we only threw about eight times a game,’’ Scaramella said.
Scaramella said the game that stood out the most may have been the one against Middletown.
“This year we beat Middletown, which is always hard to do,’’ he said.
“We were up 7-0 and they scored with two minutes left. They went for the two points, and we stopped them.’’
Once the JV season was over, some players didn’t hang up their shoulder pads. Scaramella said there were six sophomores and two freshmen who dressed for Cloverdale’s varsity playoff game, an 18-10 loss to Stellar Prep.
“One of them, Josh Lemley, who is a 6-3, 185-pound freshman, played about 15 to 18 plays, too,’’ Scaramella said.
All in all, Scaramella was very pleased that his foreboding feeling prior to the season proved to be all wrong.
“We finished over .500, so I was pretty happy,’’ he said.
