Back to the gridiron

Aug. 6—OTTUMWA — Is this finally the season for the Ottumwa football program to begin harvesting the fruits of its labor?

Head coach Brian Goodvin certainly hopes so. Some of that hard work at bringing Bulldog football back to prosperity was on display this week as the annual youth football camp at Schafer Stadium expanded from one night to three with fifth and sixth-grade students joining middle schoolers for the first Friday night under the lights learning to execute the fundamentals of the game successfully on the gridiron at Tom Kopatich Field.

"At the high school level, we're going to attempt for the first time in several years to play at all three levels. We're going to have varsity, junior varsity and a full freshman team. That freshman team is also going to play only other freshman teams, so they'll have the opportunity to develop and learn the game against kids their own age and skill level. We haven't been able to do that for a number of years."

That growth in participation is something Goodvin hopes to see this fall for middle school players. The hope is that Evans Middle School will feature enough players to put out two seventh-grade teams and two eighth-grade teams, something the Ottumwa football program used to develop winning teams for several years when Goodvin first started his coaching career.

"In the late 1980s and early 1990s, we always had two seventh-grade teams and two eighth-grade teams with a lot of kids out and participating. That's kind of been our goal all along to get those numbers back up," Goodvin said. "It seems like it's been a struggle to get kids our for football these days, but our middle school coaches (Doug McAntire and Tim Ware) have done a super job of getting kids excited about playing football."

That excitement for the game at a young age is about to result in 30 freshmen taking the field this fall for the Bulldogs. Additionally, there will be two schedules for the Evans Middle School football program with a red and white team competing with the hope of having 20 kids playing on each team.

"We're hoping to get a ton of kids out playing football," Goodvin said. "Having that opportunity to play and have that ability to get excited about playing every year is incredibly important. I think that's what played a huge role in the success that Coach Kopatich was able to have as those kids moved on up through his program.

"In the three or four years, the schools our middle school team has been playing haven't had enough players to have a B game. We've ended up with a lot of kids standing around. We did start 22 players in seventh grade and 28 players in eighth grade. What that did was bring kids to the freshman level that had never played offense or never played defense because they were pigeon-holed into their positions. With two teams and 20 or so kids on each team playing both sides of the football will be really help those kids move right into freshman football smoothly with kids getting to play both sides of the ball and getting to participate."

— Scott Jackson can be reached at sjackson@ottumwacourier.com. Follow him on Twitter@CourierScott.