2016. The peak of athletic accomplishments: The Chicago Cubs winning the World Series, the Cavaliers beating the Warriors in the NBA Finals, Team USA getting 1st place in the Rio Olympic Games with 46 gold medals and plenty more.

Unfortunately, last year wasn’t as successful for Springbrook’s football team.

The Blue Devils ended the 2016 season with an overall record of 1-9, which left most fans devastated. Some felt bad for the players, while others insulted the team and its methods for nearly a year. Many critics labelled Springbrook football as the “worst team in Montgomery County”. For some time, our football team was slowly deteriorating, and school spirit was at an all-time low. Fortunately, this didn’t stop our players and coaching staff from working even harder to improve the team’s performance.

Once preseason had begun, our coaches went to work. Springbrook coaches, Jimmy Castro, Rob Wendel (former springbrook football state championship alumni), Jeff Kroger, and head coach Jason Lomax at the helm, decided to take a different approach for this year. And whatever they did throughout preseason, man was it effective. The new Blue Devils were crushing teams in scrimmages, winning their first game of the season, and going head-to-head with teams who once defeated Springbrook without breaking a sweat. This year’s team was definitely different, and people have been asking a lot of questions as to what has changed.

I had the opportunity to speak with coach Lomax, coach Castro, and a few players about this year’s team. Here’s what they had to say.

What did you the coaches do to improve so much over the summer and preseason?

“We have implemented a lot of different workout strategies and routines. We’ve gone to a lot of coaching clinics, we even brought in the military to work out the guys. They have instilled a kind of that military mentality that will overcome anything and nothing will hold us back.” (Lomax)

How would you describe the mentality that this team has?

“Our saying is ‘last play’, because that’s what we do, that’s how we think. Everything we do is to the last play, we’re never out of anything in life or on the field so that would be the mentality that we have. We would just have a real- hard mentality and we’re just not gonna bend for anything.” (Lomax)

What does Springbrook football have that other teams don’t? What defines Springbrook football?

“It’s our attitude, it’s our confidence, it’s our swagger and it’s our brotherhood. We are a family, we stick together, we don’t let anything bring us down when somebody from the outside tries to attack one of use, they attack all of us. We stand united, shoulder to shoulder and just have each other’s back.” (Lomax)

What is new about the line this year?

“This year on the line, we went from going with individual assignments, as in players knowing their individual objective, to the entire line knowing one concept and one blocking routine for each play and that differentiates everything, because now there’s more communication on the line and it requires them to do more, requires them to call out more things but at the same time, because we’re doing all that now when it’s game speed, everything is easier because we know exactly where we are suppose to go.” (Castro)

Do you think Springbrook will leave with a big impact after this season?

“I personally believe that we have already made a big impact because coming into the season, we were expected to go 1-9, and I know that we’re 3-3, but even though we have lost those 3 games, other than the last one which we lost by a couple touchdowns, the first two we had only lost by a total of 9 points and they are very good teams. One of them was a team that was in the Elite 6 and we took it down to the wire with all those teams so again, I think we already made an impact and by the end of the season, the impact will be bigger and people will start to realize that Springbrook, is a force to be reckoned with.” (Castro)

Is there anything you would like to change/add before the season ends?

“With the season coming to an end, I think I would like to continue the whole family feel we have on the team and I would like for the school to be more supportive at the games, and more student population out to the games because that is a big part of football. When we play home, the players feed off of the crowd, you know. They feed off of the excitement and it’s something that if we bring the whole community in together, I think we can expand it to not just football and carry it to everything that we do in Springbrook and we just need to bring that family feel from the football team to the entire school.” (Lomax)

I also spoke with captains Trevon Ruffin (QB) and Noah Davis (C), to get their perspective on this year’s team.“I’m proud of my team’s effort and work ethics,” shared Trevon, who is now a senior at Springbrook, “I feel we can win throughout the rest of the season,” he said.

Noah Davis says believes that the bond that keeps him and his teammates on the same track is “family”, and that, “if one of us is hungry to win, all of us are hungry.”

The players and the coaching staff all believe that the glue that holds together this team, the motivation that helps them improve practice-by-practice and game-by-game, is their brotherly bond. At Springbrook football, family is the most important part of being a team, and this family won’t be breaking up anytime soon.

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