The Hawks football season has come to an end. The team was led by Head coach Mr. Justin Martinek, along with assistant coaches Mr. Mark Filiaggi, Mr. John Hopkins, Mr. Walt Leizear, Mr. Phil Hemling, Mr. Colton Geinger, Mr. Eugene Liebel, and Mr. Gene Liebel, Jr.
The team consisted of 34 total players – 16 being seniors, 15 juniors, and three being underclassmen: sophomores Gavin Powell, Jordan Lucas, and Ben Liebel. The team finished its final game on Friday, Nov. 1 against Elkton, their final record being 1-7, with their win being against Kenwood 35-12 on Sept. 27.
Coach and business teacher Mr. Eugene Liebel says the biggest area they need to work on is “to be more supportive of each other.” He says that bad games happen, and they “had a lot of adversity on Varsity, which we could have responded to in more positive ways.” As a group, he says they are looking to, “cultivate a more team-focused approach to face these obstacles through supporting each other.”
To train for next year, Liebel says they have started “off-season conditioning, and strength and speed training twice a week once winter sports are over.” He states both him and Coach Martinek and the rest of the staff are “reviewing ways” to make practices more effective and focused on the areas they need to.
He says even though things didn’t go well, “the majority of the guys kept showing up and continued to work and find ways to be better and we were most proud of that.”
Lucas says what he learned from this season was, “how important it is to take training seriously and how important it is to work with your teammates.” He also learned to “not give up, even if things don’t go as planned,” during the season.
Junior Xavier Dunaway says their best game was against Kenwood. He says that everyone “worked well together, which gave my teammates and I more motivation.” He also says they could have “done their pregame routines differently” to improve.