MUSKEGON TOWNSHIP – Just three years ago the Orchard View varsity football team posted a perfect 9-0 regular season record, won the Lakes 8 Conference and made the state playoffs.
A season later, in the COVID-shortened 2020 season, the Cardinals slipped a bit and went 2-5.
Nobody knows how the 2021 season would have panned out for OV, because the Cardinals did not play.
Shortly into fall practice, there were so few players out for football that head coach Fred Rademacher, in consultation with school administrators, sadly announced that the varsity season would be cancelled and the program would focus on developing players at the junior varsity level.
[1]That decision interrupted a long tradition of Orchard View varsity football, dating back to 1960. That included the most successful years, between 1993 and 2008, when the Cardinals made the state playoffs 14 times and won a state title in 2004.
Now the Cardinals are back this season, getting ready to field a varsity team that will compete as a new member of the historic West Michigan Conference. Their first game will be Aug. 25 at Reed City, and the first home game will be Sept. 1 against North Muskegon.
At a team camp on Monday, several dozen kids were organized into groups on the practice field near the football stadium, eagerly listening, going through drills and learning.
Rademacher is pleased by the number of players who have come out so far this year, and is hoping there will be enough within a few weeks to field both a varsity and JV team – but the varsity will take the field again, no matter what.
[2]“We look like a football team practicing,” said a smiling Rademacher, who took a break from the drills to talk to MuskegonSports.com. “When we got out of school we had about 40 kids, and I think we have about 33 now. We are hoping to end up with 40-45 kids in the program this season. We’re hoping to have enough for a JV team. That’s a big goal. We want to have all the younger guys playing.”
Rademacher admits that cancelling the season last summer was a difficult decision, but he’s convinced it was the right one. The number of varsity players had dwindled to about 15, which would have meant that just about everybody would have been playing both ways on offense and defense.
Player safety became a concern, particularly with a lot of sophomores on the roster, and the school pulled the plug.
“It was tough, but I believe it was the right thing to do,” Rademacher said. “We were going through two-a-day practices sometimes with as few as 12 kids.”
[3]Rademacher thinks the COVID crisis, which forced high school football teams in Michigan to start and stop and start up again in the crazy 2020 season, had something to do with the low participation last season.
“Every time we started to get some enthusiasm going we would shut down again,” the coach said. “I’m guessing a lot of guys were thinking, who go through two-a-days when we will probably just shut down again?
“I never thought it would happen, but it is what it is. That’s high school football the way it is now. There are Class A schools in the state that don’t have enough players for a JV team. Time will tell if we did the right thing or not. There are schools that cancelled football for a year, then three or four years later won a state championship.”
Ironically, a lot more players showed up after the varsity season was cancelled last year and the JV team prepared for the season, according to Rademacher.
“At one point we have about 40 kids out after school started, and we ended up with 30-plus,” he said.
[4]
The JV team had a successful season, with mostly freshmen and sophomores and a handful of juniors. OV posted a 5-2 record, with its only losses coming to Jenison and Zeeland West, two bigger schools.
The junior varsity, which usually played on Thursdays, even hosted a Friday night game so the school could continue its Homecoming tradition.
“We had a pretty good crowd for that,” Rademacher said. “I know a lot of people questioned what we did (cancelling varsity), but everyone seemed pretty fired up that night.
“We had a pretty good year. We had two losses. Jenison beat us on the last play of the game, then we played Zeeland West and they knocked us around pretty good. But the players competed hard and it was a good experience.”
The return to varsity football will be challenging for OV this season, because most of the players have no varsity experience, and the Cardinals will be competing in the upper tier of the newly-organized West Michigan Conference against powerhouses like Whitehall, Montague and Oakridge, along with Manistee, Ludington and Fremont.
[5]
The majority of players on the varsity squad this year will be juniors. There are only a few seniors out so far, according to Rademacher.
“It’s odd, because we don’t have many players with varsity experience, but we have a handful who played varsity as freshmen,” Rademacher said. “We are going to be very young and inexperienced. It’s obviously going to be a big challenge, but if some things go our way we could be competitive.”
Regardless of how the team fares this season, Rademacher said it feels good to be back on the practice field preparing for a varsity season.
“It’s exciting and we’re ready to get back at it,” the coach said. “The kids are fired up and want to play football.”
One player who was in an odd situation last year was senior Jayce Allen, who played varsity football as a freshman and sophomore, but was forced to drop down to the JV level last fall.
[6]“It was a big disappointment, but it’s always about the long-term,” Allen said, when asked about having to move down to JV. “It was a big thing so we could develop as a team and compete this year. We were playing some big schools and we got to play some good high school football.”
Allen said the players developed and formed a bond at the JV level last fall, and he thinks his team could surprise some varsity opponents in 2022.
“We took the time last year to get bigger, faster and stronger and build chemistry,” said Allen, who plays center and defensive line. “I know we will be the underdogs, but we just have to go out and compete.”
More than anything, Allen is just excited about the opportunity to play varsity again before he graduates.
“Friday nights, under the lights, it’s just amazing, and I get to do it one more time,” he said.