The football program at Grandview High suffered a significant blow this fall when injuries and low numbers forced the Eagles to cancel their last two games of the season and miss the district playoffs.
And by head coach Alex DeMatteis’ reckoning, the program will need a year off from varsity play to recover and rebuild.
At the Grandview R-2 Board of Education meeting Dec. 15, DeMatteis detailed a “football action plan” to address the reduced turnout of players and, as the second-year coach called it, the “volatility” in the program resulting from the premature end to the regular season.
“I’ve made no bones about it, how proud I am of our players, for the adversity they played through,” he said at the start of his 30-minute presentation to the board. He then detailed how the low player turnout went back to the summer training program, which drew no more than 12 players on any given day – “although there were very consistent faces showing up every day” for the two daily workouts, DeMatteis noted.
The coach proposed that Grandview scale back its program to middle-school and junior varsity teams for 2017 and resume varsity play in 2018, when participation is anticipated to be higher. DeMatteis projects 28 players for 2017, consisting of five seniors, three juniors, 11 sophomores and nine freshmen. That total is expected to grow to 43 for 2018.
With only two dozen players to work with this fall, Grandview did not field a junior varsity team. DeMatteis said the Eagles can downshift to a JV-only schedule for 2017 with the cooperation of the six other schools in the I-55 Conference (Crystal City, Herculaneum, Jefferson, St. Pius X, St. Vincent and Valle Catholic), who would need to agree to allow the five Eagle seniors to play in the JV contests.
“We have to start where we think we’d be competitive and go from there,” he said about the Eagles’ JV schedule. “Monday night would be the new Friday night next year.”
The proposal also calls for the Eagle coaching staff (Kyle Ehlmann, Michael Loyd, Marko Samardzic and Adam Sims assisted DeMatteis this fall) to work with both the middle school (seventh and eighth grade) and junior varsity teams and develop stronger mentoring relationships with the players as they advance through the program.
Those relationships, he added, were what kept the team afloat this fall.
“If we hadn’t had relationships with those players, the season would never have gotten off the ground,” he said.
DeMatteis emphasized the importance of higher participation in the summer program, which has become vital to preparing players, especially those with little or no prior experience in the sport. He termed it “dangerous” to put under-prepared and inexperienced players on the field, especially at the varsity level, and noted that official preseason practice (which started this fall on Aug. 1) isn’t sufficient by itself to get less-experienced players ready for the season.
“We need to dramatically increase summer workout and football practice participation,” he said. “We didn’t scrimmage 11-on-11 one time last summer.”
He added that transportation is the biggest issue with the summer training regimen, with summer school ending in June and some kids working at jobs all summer.
“We’re going to have to troubleshoot our way through this,” DeMatteis said.
Grandview superintendent Matt Zoph said after the meeting the board will discuss the proposal and make a decision at a future meeting.
Board member Tim Brown questioned DeMatteis on how the coaching staff plans to achieve its goals and lay the foundation for a stronger program.
Another board member, Dion Moore, spoke in favor of DeMatteis’ strategy.
“I think it’s a great plan, and our only course of action,” Moore said.
The coach acknowledged rebuilding the program will take time and hard work.
“We need to establish a new cultural foundation going forward, to re-establish varsity football in 2018,” DeMatteis said.
“We’re at a critical crossroads. We have to make a decision and live with it.”