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And an oppoiste reaction from a school in very similar situation..
Quantico HS at the Quantico Marine Base here in VA has some serious problems as you will see in this article. But they took a 180 degree different response from the school that this thread started with.
From Fredericksburg.com:
The Warriors play on despite high student turnover
Small team BIG HEART
September 13, 2006 12:51 am
Story by Todd Jacobson
TAPED TO THE WALLS inside the cramped training room at Quantico High School are faded testaments to seasons past: team pictures.
But not just any team pictures.
Like a team on a weight-loss program, there are before and after shots--first, kids in clean uniforms brimming with confidence in the summer sun. Then, next to the same bunch, a group of players crowds together like in a family portrait, a few months later and a few players lighter.
The photos are wrinkled and weathered but there for every one of Quantico's players to see, labeled simply "the starters" and "the finishers."
"We 'X' them out as they quit," said Quantico assistant coach Paul Roy, a retired Marine who directs the Warriors' defense.
Roy points to the before pictures, where, sure enough, there are faces carefully turned to shadows with a black marker, a handful on each team.
Roy, at Quantico for seven years, has weathered the highs and lows of the program.
He's watched the team win, like it did last year, when it went 8-1 and qualified for the Virginia Independent Schools Athletic Association Division III playoffs.
And he's seen the team lose, like it seems destined to do this season.
Players transfer in and out of the Department of Defense's tiny high school as their Marine Corps parents bounce from base to base. This year, the outs have out-numbered the ins, and an exceptionally inexperienced group has dropped its first two games. Combined score: 83-6.
This is life with one of Virginia's smallest football teams, a program always in flux.
Winning isn't always expected, but quitting can't be stomached.
"There is some introspection that goes on, some self evaluation, whether or not this is what I really want to do," Roy said. "They're thinking, 'Do I want to subject my body to the pain and agony of preseason and every day coming out here and just physically getting beaten up.' It takes a special individual."
A roster full of rookies
In the past, seasons at Quantico began with a field trip to Little Creek in the Tidewater area. At the Naval Amphibious Base, the players bonded. They slept together in an open squad bay, were up together at 5:30 a.m., ate together and practiced together.
Chris Watts took over for Ken Woodie as Quantico coach in June, too late to plan the trip, and this year, practice begins at dawn on July 31.
With Marines jogging and the rest of the world in bed, 16 players--15 boys and one girl--trudge down a flight of steps and into their first practice.
Among the group, there is but one true returning starter--senior lineman and linebacker Chaz Roberts, one the team's two captains--and he missed most of last year with a knee injury.
Many players have graduated from last year's playoff team. Others have moved away.
"We are not big, but it's pride and heart and that's the biggest thing," Roberts said. "You work on heart and courage under what our fathers do."
In the days leading up to Quantico's first practice, Watts, a Stafford graduate and a former Indians' assistant, isn't sure how many players will show up on the first day of practice.
Toughness isn't the problem. Numbers are.
That first day, the Warriors can't scrimmage because they don't have enough players.
The base population is down because of a housing construction project. (As of Monday, the school's enrollment stood at 105--with fewer than 50 percent boys.)
It's hard to field a football team for sure, but then it's hard to field any team at the school, Roy said.
Watts and Roy roam the halls of the school with their heads on a constant swivel, trying to fill out the roster, recruiting eighth-graders (this year's team has six of them).
One upside to the size of the student body is that kids who might not normally play on the prep level get a shot to suit up.
"It's a quality of life issue," Roy said. "The wins and losses don't matter. If you happen to win, great, but they want a place where the sons and daughters of the Marines on the base can compete in athletics."
As Watts begins the first practice, he coaches with his sparse numbers in mind and an eye to the team's first game, which looms less than a month away. In the unbalanced offense he's installing, he teaches his running backs to play three different positions.
Linemen are taught every spot --center, guard and tackle--in case they have to switch. Freshman Chris McNair will play four different positions on offense before the first game, and though he seems best suited to play tight end, he can't settle in there. One injury and he might have to move.
"That's Quantico," says McNair, who played sparingly as an eighth-grader a year ago. "Sometimes it's tough. If you are learning new plays and get moved around that's kind of tough."
The issue of quarterback is solved with a question. "Who here thinks they can play quarterback?" Watts yells.
Freshman Brenton Roberts steps forward. "OK, you're hired," Watts says, "for now."
Brenton Roberts was a backup a year ago, and of the 16 players scattered on the field, he can throw the best spiral.
"You have to teach the entire team how to play one position," Watts says. "Even if you don't lose those kids, it's inevitable somebody is going to have to move somewhere at some point in time and somebody will need to step in. You try to keep it simple, give them rules and not try to overcomplicate it."
But even as he teaches on the first day, competing with dragonflies and mosquitoes for room on the field, the pickings are slim. He's got 16 players, and he's hoping for at least a dozen more.
Transfer roulette
Roy likes to call the first few weeks of practice Christmas in July, because at Quantico, they're never sure what presents will arrive courtesy of the Marine Corps.
Last year, Martin Noziglia arrived from Argentina and was a star on defense. Jarrett Turner transferred from Brooke Point and was the team's leading receiver.
In all, the Warriors have just six returning players from last year's team, and in Chaz Roberts, the rare four-year player at Quantico. Most don't stay long enough.
Otherwise, players have come from all over.
By the Warriors' opening game Aug. 26 against the Maryland Christian Saints, Quantico has added five players.
Three days before the game, senior Mike Brokaw showed up at practice from the suburbs of Cleveland, where his dad was in charge of a Marine Corps Reserve unit.
He played as a freshman at Midpark High School in Middleburg, Ohio. He was immediately a two-way starter for the Warriors.
The day he walked into Quantico, his guidance counselor suggested football.
"She said, 'You look pretty big compared to those boys,'" Brokaw recalls.
Freshman Chris Cotis arrived with his family from the Marine Corps base in Twentynine Palms, Calif. Eighth-grader Dan Choike moved here from Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, and eighth-grader Damian Coker came from Jacksonville, N.C.
Junior Sean Dallachie was in Okinawa, Japan, last season.
None has played high school football before.
"In all sports we never know what's going to come out," Roy said. "We're always looking up at the hill, and you see cars coming and you're just hoping."
Game time
For five weeks, the Warriors practice, and it's an hour before the team's first game. The players are sequestered in Quantico's gymnasium waiting for a final pre-game tuneup to begin when the Maryland Christian Saints arrive.
A group of players crowd around a door and look through the slits of a window to catch a glimpse of their first opponents. For many, this will be their first high school game, and the rumor is that the Saints, a team composed of home-schooled students based in Bel Air, Md., are "big and fast."
"What if they're all small and little?" a voice calls out from the crowd.
No such luck.
The Saints are bigger and faster and better organized than the inexperienced Warriors. Quantico fumbles four times, has two punts blocked, and by halftime, the score is 27-0.
"We're making mistakes because we're a young and inexperienced football team," Watts says as he addresses his players, all 21 of them kneeling at halftime in front of a scoreboard that makes it near impossible to forget the score. "But we're going to get better."
"Don't look at the score," he says. "Don't put your head down."
But it's hard not to.
The Saints finish off the Warriors, 34-0, and two weeks later, with the roster ballooning to 24 players, Quantico loses to the Fuqua School, 49-6.
Junior Jerald Bailey scores the Warriors' only touchdown of the game on a 55-yard run in the first quarter.
"It's going to be up and down," Watts said. "We are going to have opportunities, but you know, we are going to have teams that are a lot bigger than we are, more experienced than we are, and that's how it is. We'll be up and down. We'll have our moments, but we can't get frustrated."
But for Roberts, it is a little frustrating.
Twice, he's been on playoff teams, including last year, when the Warriors lost to Blessed Sacrament Huguenot in a Virginia Independent Schools Association Division III semifinal.
The year hasn't gone well, but only one player has quit. Roberts hasn't even considered the concept.
"I want all the young kids to experience that," he says. "Being at that level and then coming back to this, it's tough, but it's still enjoyable just to play."
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