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When you go to a high school football game, you can feel the passion from the people involved.
“For a community, especially one our size too, you can have so many different people being able to come together on a Friday night,” said Clever Athletic Director Brian Breeden.
But there was something a little bit more meaningful about Monday’s game at Strafford.
“It’s neat because we’ve never had football before,” said Clever resident Kelly Gelle.
Three generations have said the same in Clever, but for the first time in 90 years, the Blue Jays have a football team.
“It just seems like right now we have so many people coming out to support the football players that don’t even have kids playing so it’s just kind of brought the community together,” said Gelle, whose son plays for the Blue Jays, and whose daughter is on the cheer squad.
After years of planning, the Blue Jays were finally able to put together a team to compete at the junior varsity level in a game on Monday.
Although it’s not quite varsity yet, it’s a step in the right direction.
“We’ll still probably have another year of JV football, where we might have a few varsity games in there next year, but our very first year will be 2020-2021,” said Breeden.
Before that can happen, these Blue Jays are focused less on winning and more on learning.
“Little things that you take for granted as a coach, whether a guy is on the line of scrimmage or off the line of scrimmage, kids don’t even know what that means, they don’t even know what the line of scrimmage is. So we’ve had to explain a ton of things like false starts, too many men on the line of scrimmage, delay of game. It goes on and on and on,” said Clever Head Coach Jeff Stone.
While Clevers works through those growing pains, Blue Jays fans have another reason to cheer.
