NGM Football - A Season in Review
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Well friends, there you have it...a 2-8 season. Not exactly what first year Head Coach Schuett envisioned when he signed on, I’m sure. Of course, the naysayers out there are calling it a failure. I AM NOT ONE OF THEM!!
Small schools are especially susceptible to “waves” of players coming through, with some classes producing more athletes than others. It happens. And let’s be serious, NGM does not belong in the Capitol Conference where the population of some of the cities is 3-4x that of New Glarus and/or Monticello. And if anyone thinks we belong in the same conference as Madison Edgewood, I might suggest you visit http://www.bridges4sale.com. (That being said, we did give the Crusaders a bit of a game - enough so that a number of the Edgewood player’s mothers were apparently treated for rope burn after overworking their rosaries.)
It is one of life’s little ironies that we learn far more from our difficulties, losses, and “failures” than we do from our successes. In that case perhaps the NGM players received a Ph.D. level education in the consumption of humble pie. This team and these players endured a difficult situation and have come out of it with tremendous personal growth...the kind that they cannot learn in a classroom, and the kind that will serve them well in their future careers. Put another way, sports is the classroom on the field.
Of course, one tough season does not beget another. Yours truly played on a NGHS team that went 1-8 in 1968, and then came back to (almost) run the table in 1969 going 8-1. It happens, and it WILL happen again for this program.
Editor Sue Moen recently wrote a most poignant, thorough and thoughtful article on the changes forthcoming for this program. I am confident that once the appropriate conference is found where we can compete on a level playing field, the win-loss column will come around more to our liking.
When I reflect and consider that, despite some rather lopsided scores, I never once saw any quit in any of these NGM players. So tell me, just how do you put a “score” on that?!
