By Kim J. Harmon

Can you hear it?

It’s the sounds of football – the excitement, the chants, the bodies banging into each other, the shoulder pads pounding into the tackling dummies, of punts and passes and kids getting sick off in the bushes.

Ever since last November, when a loss to Masuk capped a disappointing 3-7 season under first-year coach Ken Roberts, the Nighthawks have been waiting for this moment – this moment of redemption.

“It’s exciting,” said Matt Saunders, who will captain the 2000 team along with Todd Palo, Rich Petretti, Adam Hayden and Matt McCarthy. “We’ve been ready for this since Thanksgiving. We’ve been training so hard for this, we have a good core on the field, we’re all tight, and we believe we can do this job.”

The job began Monday at 4 pm at Newtown High School – the start of the first week of conditioning.

“Emotionally, we’re all high and excited,” said McCarthy. “It’s a tough week of practice, but it will only make us better.”

Yes, it’s redemption time.

“We’ve been getting everything ready before practice and now it’s here,” said Hayden. “I’m excited because it’s finally come together. We’ll show everybody what we’re about this year.”

The First Day

 

The first warm-up lap at the main football field is supposed to start at 4 pm, but the players start pounding the rubberized track at about 3:55. One player straggles in and prompts coach John Larkins to remark, “If you’re not five minutes early, you’re late.”

After the lap and some more stretching, the backs take on a mile run – knowing that, by the end of the week, all of them have to break a 6:15 mile. The linemen, who go off second, have to break a 7:15 mile (8:15 if they weight in the neighborhood of 230 pounds).

“That’s what I always tell them,” says assistant coach Carl Paternoster, who also is an assistant coach on the boys’ track team. “It always comes back to track.”

The first back crosses the line at 5:36 – not bad at all. Some linemen even challenge that time. When the smoke clears and some players struggle to catch their breath, coach Roberts sees that only five players didn’t make the cut-off.

“I’m very surprised – in a good way,” he says. “Only five guys out of 47 didn’t make it. That’s excellent.”

Little does he know, at the time, that most of the players won’t make the cut-off time on the second day.

Coach Roberts also remarks on the show of team spirit – after seeing guys like Saunders and Hayden run shotgun along side some linemen, literally pushing two across the finish line – but worries that it’s not enough.

“If we had all started helping out people right away,” he says, “we’re be good in the mile right now. But I saw guys help out – and that’s good. From now on, what we’ll be saying is . . . do everything together, as a team.”

After that, it’s time to head to the back field. Players have just a couple of minutes to shed their sneakers, put on their spikes and grab their practice jerseys, and head out to the field behind the high school.

Back there, the tackling dummy apparatus remains unmoved from last season, overgrown with grass.

The second session begins with calisthenics – the running, the stretching (the quads, the calves, the back, the arms, the hammies, the neck) – and to this point only one player has to scamper off into the woods to be sick.

Not bad.

After cals, the team breaks up into units – one works on punt returns, another works on punt coverage, and still another works on punting. Coach Larkins says, “We gave a lot of people good field position last year. We’ve got to work on this.”

A break - the units finish their work and gather in the middle of the field.

“Our numbers are excellent,” says coach Roberts, “but you will have to be mentally and physically tough to play a lot of football.”

Players break up into units again – the linemen work on the tackling dummies, the quarterbacks work on the handoffs and the drop backs, some receivers work on pass patterns down near the wooden goal post.

One quarterback fails to sell a fake and coach Roberts yells, “You better carry out that fake or you’ll be carrying out a lap around the field.” To a back who lagged a little on a pattern, he adds, “Still on vacation, huh? Come one, vacation is over.”

Around six – still a half hour to go – practice seems to get tougher. Three huddles – blue, yellow and white – get together to work on the playbook. Do a play wrong, it costs five up-downs (Not so bad. Most players have earned a bunch of up-downs already because of some slight or another observed by coach Roberts).

Later, it comes down to one play. The white team needs to complete a pass to cut the final cals from 25 reps to 15. The pass is right on the money – but the receiver drops it to a chorus of groans from the rest of the team.

Coach Roberts cuts them a break.

The players race through the final calisthenic stations – the sit-ups, the push-ups, the crawls and the line jumps.

It’s a tough, tough finish to a hard day.

“Work your butt off in practice,” coach Roberts reminds the players in a group huddle. “You don’t want anything left at the end of practice.” And Hayden adds, “It’s going to be a hard week – but it will be worth it.”

The players meander off the field towards the locker room, knowing they will have to do it all over again on Tuesday and probably knowing in their heart – like the coaching staff does – that the second day is always the worst.

But it’s just one small hurdle on the way to a championship.