Football team fights through a rough season

Posted Jan. 26, 2024

Jaionna Frison

Cub Reporter

After another losing season, DHS football coaches think injuries are their biggest challenge, and players blame their own discipline, but maybe there's something beyond their control that is really what's holding them back. 

This season wasn’t the best for the varsity football team; constantly losing multiple games back to back. Why aren’t they winning any games? How do they keep losing? Are they ever going to break their losing streak? Were some frequently asked questions by students around DDHS this football season. 

“Varsity” Head “football” coach Cal Szueber agrees that varsity had a rough season this year. Especially with there being a lot of first year players, who were juniors. They were also  overmatched in some games. varsity won their first game and lost their last eight games. Szueber believes that the DDHS football program is in great shape overall. However, we just had a poor varsity season. “For the off season and next year  we have to get stronger and just use the experience that we learned this year,” said Szueber. 

Assistant coach Greg Carradine also acknowledged that the varsity team had a rough season. “I feel we could’ve done a lot better than what we did,” said Carradine. “The guys worked hard though, It is what it is, the kids had fun, it was all about the experience and I'm looking forward to next year.” One of the biggest challenges he believes the team faced was injuries, week to week with kids being injured made a big impact on Friday night games. Carradine also considers the fact that when losing so many games the commitment and motivation level of the team wasn’t there at times. Carradine says, “I’m a firm believer when you have success in your program and you’re winning some games, like the motivation and commitment is a little bit different,” said Carradine. “So I do think at times-the commitment wasn’t there.” 

Varsity football players weren’t too fond of how the season went either. Varsity players think there were various things that held them back from winning many games this season, Such as players being unhealthy, coaching staff, not gettting along with coaching staff, issues at home, and them simply just being bad. Some players were ashamed to admit they were even part of the team, as well as being ashamed to talk about how the overall season went. 

However was varsity just really bad? Or was there something else that was stopping them from being successful? Research shows that successful high school football programs have various factors that make them successful. One really common factor in successful programs is having a strong coaching staff, a strong coaching staff is essential to having a winning football team. Another common factor of a successful football program is commitment, commitment to their team, practice, weight room, off season training, academics, and etc. 

Varsity players aren't entirely to blame for their bad football season this year, and should feel less ashamed about being on a losing football team. "Football is just one of those sports that doesn't stop,” Carradine said. "Just like anything in life that you wanna get better at, you gotta continue to work at it.'"