Down River – Dec. 10, 2015
A FootballConundrum:
One of life’s great mysteries is why Central Mountain High School has not had more success with its football program.
People who watch these things believed that with the consolidation of Lock Haven High School and Bald Eagle-Nittany High School some 16 years ago the resulting Central Mountain football program would be one capable of at least some modest success. For whatever reason, it hasn’t happened to the degree program supporters would have hoped.
The program never did take off, early on battling to reach .500 when the school played schools similar or larger in size. And in recent years the Wildcats have gone through coaches and struggled to win, even with a downsized schedule against mostly smaller schools.
Why? We don’t know. We do know the school has been respectable and then some in some other sports, most notably wrestling, softball and baseball, so it can be done. But football? Not so good.
This despite the fact that amateur sports, particularly football and wrestling, are part of the Lock Haven area culture. High School football achievement goes back better than a century and includes a mythical national championship team at Lock Haven High in the 1920s and extended success during the Don Malinak years at Lock Haven and the Walt Diehl years at Bald Eagle-Nittany.
But in terms of wins and losses at Central Mountain, success has been lacking. And the trend has been downward; a handful of wins a year under two years directed by former coach Vinnie Kishbaugh and a total of three victories over the last two years under new coach Mike Nines.
And now the school district wants Nines to step down but many of his players and their parents think that would be a mistake. Some of those players made impassioned and courteous pleas to retain Nines at the last Keystone Central school board meeting. (And in a nice touch board president Butch Knauff complimented them on their decorum as they presented their case).
Because it is a personnel matter, no one in officialdom will publicly comment on why the district wants to take the program in another direction.
All we can do is tell you what we’ve seen in Wildcat football, cultivated by seeing virtually every Central Mountain game over the years since its inception. We saw the number of participants drop drastically low in the 2012 and 2013 years under the previous coach and drastically increase in the 2014 and 2015 years under Nines’ direction. We saw an enthusiastic group on the field and on the sideline.
Followers would have enjoyed more wins, as would the players and coaches. But just as regular success helps breed continued success, continued losing can take a toll. So fair-minded fans would likely agree that a two-year window isn’t enough to turn around a succession of losing seasons.
And playing football is more than wins and losses. If you were in the audience and listened to Tyler Zablocki, one of Nines’ senior players this year, address the school board last Thursday you would move to applaud Nines rather than seek his ouster. Zablocki talked about his family situation and how he was faced with giving up sports participation to get a job to pay for a needed apartment. But he said Nines offered support and helped him find stability in his personal life to the point that Zablocki is now looking at attending college, an option which would not have been available without the assistance the football program and Nines provided him. Score a major off-the-field win for coach Nines.
Maybe there is something going on with the program we don’t know, maybe there are concerns that need addressed.
If there are concerns, it says here, the better choice would be to call in the coach and say “let’s fix these.” Let’s give coach Nines some direction and some staffing help. He certainly appears to have the whole-hearted support of many of his players. Let’s find a way to get the district to build on that, rather than go through another attempt at a rebuild of the football program, a sport which was once the pride of Lock Haven and Mill Hall. There is no reason it can’t be again. Let’s give coach Nines another year.
