Youthful Tigers learning

By TOM BONE

PRINCETON — There’s a lot to learn on a player’s first day of varsity football. Luckily, Justice Shafer had some help.

The freshman tight end for the Tigers of Princeton Senior High School was dripping with perspiration — and maybe a little water from the drinking fountains set up by the coaches — as he finished his first varsity practice at Hunnicutt Stadium on Monday.

He said the older players were a help as he tried to execute blocking assignments and pass routes. “They supported me and stuff,” he said.

He also credited the coaches. “They (were) helping a lot, too. They took the time to go over things with me.”

Asked to sum up the morning, Shafer said, “It was different,” he said. “It’s better for me (to try out for varsity), but it was hard.”

Neither Shafer nor upperclassmen have a guarantee of making it onto the varsity squad, which should shake out to 42 to 44 players according to head coach Ted Spadaro.

The players’ desire to come into August physically prepared helps him decide who’s ready, he said. That feeds into his slogan for this year, printed on t-shirts worn by the team: “Finish it.”

“It’s up to my seniors that are leading this team right now,” Spadaro said. “We go with them first, and then the kids follow them. ...

“I have about eight of those seniors who have really worked hard. They want this winning season. Now I have to mold the rest of them into that, and get it done.”

With the seniors’ help?

“Exactly right. This is all one team, here.”

He lamented some students’ lack of desire to work hard.

Spadaro said, “The more you instill that in them, and talk to them about it, sometimes the less they do. And then they wonder why they’re not playing, and they’re standing on the sidelines on Friday night, and that’s the reason why. They don’t get themselves ready.

“If you don’t get your body ready, and then come out here in the first week or two and ask your body to do something it’s not used to doing, it’s not going to happen.”

The Tigers’ seniors will help try to turn around a 3-7 record posted last year, a season which started with a 15-13 win over Bluefield but ended with five straight losses. Several of the season’s games were close, but got away in the last few minutes of play.

Spadaro said, “We lost four out of five ballgames in the fourth quarter. That’s when you’re supposed to be playing your best.”

“We had a chance to win six or seven ballgames last year, and we didn’t. In my evaluation, we played two bad games, against GW (George Washington High School) and Riverside. The rest of the time, we were in the ballgames.

“We just didn’t get the big play, and the reason you don’t get big plays is, you don’t make big plays. If you don’t make ’em, you’re not going to get ’em. There are no gifts in football. You’ve got to work for them.”

The varsity squad returns experience at several skill positions, Spadaro said, but the freshman unit may pose a challenge to the coaches when deploying the personnel available.

The coach said, “What’s hurting me right now is, we don’t have enough freshmen lineman. They’re all receivers or running backs. It’s pretty tough to ask a halfback to play tackle or something like that. I don’t like doing that.”

The varsity edition of the Tigers opens the 2009 season on Aug. 28 at Spring Valley High School in the Huntington area. The first home contest is the annual cross-county meeting with Bluefield, on Sept. 4 at Hunnicutt Stadium.

— Contact Tom Bone at

tbone@bdtonline.com