Three years ago, Muskegon Heights varsity football coach Van Parker had a long-term plan in mind.

He had a very small team in that 2018 season, with only about 15 players, and 10 of them were brand new freshmen. At a lot of schools – like Orchard View this year – that would have meant cancelling the season.

But Parker and Heights officials decided that the young players were up to the challenge, and figured it would be a learning experience. While they knew there would be a lot of losses, the idea was to have them rolling by the time they were juniors and seniors.

The first part came true. The young Tigers took their lumps in 2018 and 2019, winning only one of 18 games. Hopes were higher as the former

 

 

freshmen headed into their junior season in 2020, but it never happened due to COVID.

Now the Tigers are back on the field, prepared to return to the world of high school football after a year away, and they are excited.

“The sense of normalcy is exciting,” said Parker, whose team will open the season on Aug. 26 with a road  game at Potterville. “We get to be around our kids again, and  compete with our kids again.

“I missed it a ton. I love the game, and we have a lot of kids who love the game, as well. I didn’t know what to do with myself a lot of times last season. There’s nothing like smelling that green grass, and getting that football feeling.”

Parker knows that having a season away from competition will have an impact this fall, physically and mentally. But he says there is talent on his team, and he’s hopeful that the Tigers, led by the core group of seniors, will do better than people expect.

Key players this year will include senior quarterback Jakari Edwards, junior running back Anthony Floyd, and senior receiver Darice Totten.

“I think the physical part will have the biggest impact,” he said. “They didn’t get to have a football season. They didn’t get the chance to figure out how to figure things out. There are things about football you can only learn by playing the game.

“But skill-wise, I’m not saying we’re all the way caught up, but we’ve had a pretty good summer and some good practices so far. We’re definitely going in the right direction. There’s a ton of ability on this team.”

Senior Devin Cooper, an offensive lineman and linebacker, agrees with his coach.

“We’ve got a pretty good group this season, and a pretty good chance to come back,” Cooper said.

Enthusiasm among the players will not be an issue, Parker said.

“They can’t wait to put on their jerseys and they can’t wait to play a game,” he said. “It’s been a long time for us. We are definitely excited to put the orange and black back on and represent Muskegon Heights.”

Muskegon Heights was the only area football school to fail to field a team last fall, because the school board voted to move the season to the spring.

That was actually the original plan for every team in Michigan, until state officials changed their minds and allowed the traditional fall season to be played after all, with a shortened six-game regular season schedule that began in mid-September.

Most schools got their teams back on the field for the fall, but Muskegon Heights officials stood by their original decision, due to the particularly harsh impact that COVID was having on the African-American community.

They hoped there would be other teams for their student-athletes to play when the spring rolled around. But there weren’t, so the 2020 season never happened for Muskegon Heights, or that group of former freshmen who were about to play their third season of varsity.

That didn’t surprise Parker, who admits he was doubtful about the plan to play in the spring.

“We thought we might have been able to play in the spring, but the reality was that everybody else was playing in the fall,” he said. “I never really thought it was going to happen.”

Cooper said he was upset by the cancellation, particularly when he saw all the other teams from area schools on the field.

“It kind of hurt,” he said. “Everybody else got the chance to play. For some people, like he seniors last year, that was their last chance to play.”

Losing the season was costly for a lot of the players, Parker said. The seniors who missed their last season can never get that back, and several lost opportunities to possibly play at the college level, he said.

The cost also went beyond the football field, according to the coach.

“A lot of kids lost opportunities,” he said. “We lost one kid to the street. You had kids that had nothing to do. They are easily distracted and looking for things to latch on to, positive or negative, and during he pandemic a lot of it was negative.”

Cooper said some of his former teammates faded out of the program because of the lost season.

“It hurt the team a lot,” he said. “Some people who were here last year, some are in the streets now or just lost the passion to play. It took away a lot of people.”

Parker is hoping to have about 25 players suiting up for the first game, and he hopes the news of the team being back will convince more students to put on the pads, either this season or in the future.

“We’re trying to let the thing sell itself,” Parker said. “A lot of them got lost during the pandemic and found other things to occupy their time, but we’re showing them we are here playing football. A lot of kids have seen team pictures and stuff and wanted to play again. Hopefully we can entice a few more to come out.”