Redington building a football program

KNIK — The namesake of the Valley’s newest school knew all about building a team. The coaches in Joe Redington Jr/Sr High School football program are taking a page from the Father of the Iditarod’s playbook.

They’re starting out with young pups, in hopes of fielding a team of full-grown Huskies.

About 30 Redington freshmen and sophomores spend each afternoon on the school’s new turf field working through drills, establishing a foundation for Redington Huskies football.

“We’re building things,” Redington coach Tony Brooke said recently.

Brooke said the program has already experienced promising progress and growth in just the few weeks the players have been practicing. Like the Valley’s four established varsity programs — Colony, Houston, Palmer and Wasilla — the Redington program opened practice in late July. There were only about a dozen players participating in practice early in the preseason, but after Redington opened its doors officially on the first day of school, Aug. 17, participation numbers jumped. There was an instant buzz in the school’s hallways. Now Redington has anywhere from 25 to 30 players in a practice, Brooke said.

That has already opened doors for progress.

“We’re starting to be able to start doing team drills, seven on seven, 11 on 11,” Brooke said.

With the larger numbers, in practice coaches are able to split players into different positions. Linemen can practice with the linemen, and the skill position players can practice with players at their position.

Starting from scratch to build a new program, Brooke said the Redington coaching staff is beginning with the basics.

“Fundamentals are huge right now with these guys,” Brooke said.

Brooke said there are about nine or 10 players who have never played football before. And with only freshmen and sophomores currently enrolled in high school classes at Redington, everyone on the field is young. Brooke said coaches have an emphasis on simple concepts, such as footwork, positioning, who to line up across from, which hole to run through on offense and what gap to cover on defense.

Currently Brooke said there are about four coaches at most practices. The positive with the small numbers, Brooke said, is the opportunity for coaches to have more 1-on-1 time with players, as the focus is on fundamentals and the basics.

The early stages of any program feature obstacles growing pains, Brooke said, and Redington has had its obstacles. Brooke said the two biggest issues, other than participation, have involved waiting for equipment and the facility to be ready. Redington practiced on its home field for the first time Aug. 21. Before that, the Huskies took the short trip north to Houston High to use the Hawks’ home field for practice.

“We’re so thankful for those guys providing an opportunity for us to practice, opening their doors for our kids to come out,” Brooke said of Houston High.

And now the equipment is also coming in. The Huskies have their home field, and things like a new blocking sled for players to use.

“We’re building a program from scratch,” Brooke said. “We’re going through some of those bumps and bruises, but that’s kind of expected.”

Brooke and the Huskies had a chance to see some of that progress last week. The Huskies scrimmaged a group of Houston players at Houston High.

“It was really positive,” Brooke said of the scrimmage. “As coaches, we were pretty pleased with a lot of the progress they made.”

Redington was scheduled to make a trip to Fairbanks to play Monroe Catholic Saturday. That trip was canceled, Brooke said, but Redington will take the field later this year. The Huskies have three junior varsity games scheduled, with a fourth pending. Redington is scheduled to make two trips to Homer this season, one to face Homer and another to take Voznesenka. Redington will celebrate its first homecoming in school history with a game against Houston Oct. 3 at Redington. There is also a potential game against Valdez in the works.

Redington will add a class in each of the next two years. The junior class will come to Redington for the 2016-17 school year and a senior class will be added for the 2017-18 school year. Brooke said the goal is for Redington to make its varsity debut in 2017.

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz at sports@frontiersman.com.