Daily Archives: September 11, 2005

Insider: 1-0

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Saturday marked a big day for Fitchburg football. For the six of us players that came in four years ago with the new coaching staff, Saturday was the first time that we won our opener. Saturday was also revenge for two losses last year.

In all my years of playing football I have never seen a player dominate a football game the way our senior linebacker Frank Famularo did on Saturday. Frank has been a leader from the first day he arrived at Fitchburg, and has been a captain for three seasons. Since Aug. 19, when we came in to camp Frank has been stressing one thing, to take care of business against Curry.

“Take care of business,” is exactly what Frank did on Saturday — 15 tackles (13 solo) and a pick for a touchdown is a great day for any player, but more importantly Frank was our leader. 85 players and coaches went to battle on Saturday afternoon. Frank by far stood out as the heart and soul of our team.

There was something, however that did not go well. We had three kicks blocked — two field goals and an extra point. It was very aggravating and we need to work hard this week to improve on that part of the game. Special teams are very important to our success and we need to take advantage when we can get the points.

Today is September 11, 2005, 4 years after the tragedy of 9/11/01, so I feel that today is a good day to talk a little about the important things outside of football. Fitchburg football doesn’t employ any full-time coaches. We have a collection of hard working guys that know the game and want to teach the game they love. Our staff consists of a nurse, a recreation director, two teachers, two correction officers, a traveling coach, a cop, and a firefighter, all of which make very large contributions to society.

Our head coach is a firefighter and his hard work and dedication along with that of the rest of the coaching staff is something that us players appreciate very much. Coach loves football and he makes sure that we all know by the time and effort he puts into making sure that we are successful, but I don’t think he would change his profession for anything. I have been able to get close to coach Haverty and when he speaks of being a firefighter you can hear the proudness in his voice. I have often heard him tell people how his father and his grandfather were both firefighter and that it is very important to him.

It is days like today September 11, when we need to appreciate what others do on a daily basis. Thank you to everyone out there who either puts there own lives in jeopardy, or helps to make someone else’s life better.

Immediate thoughts on Week 2

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Alright, these aren’t as immediate as they could be, thanks to the server problems we had last night. Thankfully, we found out this morning that the issues were not related to the amount of traffic on the site, but a memory problem on the machine.

Carthage continued to struggle on offense. The Redmen can skate by another two weeks because they face Benedictine in Week 3 and have a bye in Week 4 but Millikin starts off the CCIW portion of the schedule in Week 5, followed immediately by North Central and Augustana.

Speaking of Augustana, the Vikings looked pretty good on Saturday at Catholic. The final score is somewhat misleading — it was 49-7 when Augustana put the second string in and Catholic’s first string scored three times. Catholic looks like it’s on the road to recovery, however. The Cardinals moved the ball somewhat consistently between the 20s but threw two picks in the end zone and missed a field goal.

Principia needs to go back to the drawing board on special teams with three failed conversions in a 20-18 loss to Trinity Bible. (Been a while since anyone’s used those words.)

Lost in the shadow of the numbers put up by Earlham, Manchester and Washington and Jefferson yesterday was the offensive onslaught by St. John Fisher. The Cardinals posted 672 yards of offense and got three touchdowns apiece by Mark Robinson (one was 86 yards) and Noah Fehrenbach (one was 55 yards) in beating Rochester. That’s pretty good from an offense that looked like it had been simplified last week for Nick Suchyna’s first career start.

Along with Carthage, worried about Albright (34-33 win at Ursinus), Hampden-Sydney (allowed 40 points to Gettysburg) and Wheaton (23-16 win against Gustavus, which has lost 12 of its past 14 games).

Don’t overlook: Fitchburg State beating Curry in an NEFC crossover game pitting last year’s two division champs. It’s Curry’s second loss in 23 regular-season games. … North Park starts off 2-0 for the first time in goodness knows how long. In Kickoff, remember, we projected they would actually win a conference game. … Of course, we also thought Puget Sound would play nine games. … John Carroll had eight takeaways against Hope (six picks, two fumble recoveries).