A way to keep playing First-year devlopmental football team meeting challenges
Keith Jackson of the Strabane Spartans jumps to tip the football backwards to owner/player Rick Moore during a practice recently at Chartiers-Houston High School. The Spartans are a full contact pro-developmental football team that plays in the Ohio Football League. Strabane has a 3-3 record and will host the Western Reserve Scourge Saturday night.
Strabane Spartans players Curtis Gardner and Derrick Allen practice passing drills. The Strabane Spartans play in a league against teams in the Pittsburgh area.
Strabane Spartans coach Jeff Patterson talks to Daven Allen during a waterbreak in practice. The team plays between 10 to 14 games starting in May.
Charles Oliver jumps to grab a pass during practice for the Spartans football team. Players aren’t paid for their involvement and must pay a fee to be a participant in the team.
Members of the Strabane Spartans goof off during a water break in practice at Chartiers-High School practice football field June 24.
HOUSTON – Forty-something wide receiver/defensive back Curtis Gardner yells across the field at his teammates, “Hey, what do they call wide receivers who can’t catch? Cornerbacks.”
Meanwhile, coach/owner/fullbacker/linebacker Rick Moore is trying to show teammates the proper technique to pick up a loose ball, only to badly miss his first try when the thrown ball skips past him, drawing guffaws from the players standing behind him.
It’s as loose a football practice as you’ll ever see, but this is what happens when all of the quarterbacks are absent. Each is at work instead of practice.
Getting players to come to practice around busy schedules is just one of the obstacles faced by the Strabane Spartans, a pro developmental team playing in its first season in the 18-team Ohio Football League.
Based in Canonsburg, the Spartans practice and play their home games at Chartiers-Houston High School, the alma mater of player/owners Phil Henderson and Moore.
The duo previously played for the Pittsburgh Stealth in the same league and wanted to offer Washington County players a similar experience a little closer to home.
“It’s an opportunity to keep playing ball, but there are the occasional guys who get looks and get a chance to move up to the pro indoor and Arena League,” Moore said. “The (Pittsburgh) Colts once sent Darnell Dinkins to the NFL. Obviously, that’s a far stretch, but it’s anything to keep the guys playing. If a guy can go out and make a modest living playing, then great. The guys here are paying their own way to be here.”
And there’s the rub.
Not only are these guys putting their bodies at risk of injury in this full-contact football league, they are paying to do so.
“We’ve got a lot of guys hurt. We’re old. And a lot of guys work,” Moore admitted. “Working players into practice around their work schedule, that’s a big struggle for us. It’s hard. Because of that, practices aren’t nearly as productive as high school or college. We try to do with them what we can. Today, we focused on things that we saw were wrong (last) Saturday. It’s a totally different culture in terms of practice and things like that.”
Despite the struggles that plague an upstart franchise, the Spartans are making it work.
A win last weekend over the Greensburg Panthers – a team ranked in the top 20 in the Eastern power ratings by AmericanFootballnews.net – gives the Spartans a 3-3 record heading into Saturday’s night’s home game against the Western Reserve Scourge, a team from Youngstown, Ohio.
“Our numbers are back up,” said longtime Chartiers-Houston assistant and youth coach Jeff Patterson, the Spartans’ head coach. “That got everyone excited again.”
The team practices twice a week at the Chartiers-Houston auxiliary field that sits above the school’s football stadium. On game days, the Spartans received permission to rent the school’s stadium for home games.
The price tag? Try $1,650 per game.
That’s a lot of cash for a team that charges $7 admission at games for adults, $5 for students and does not charge kids under 12.
Not that Moore is complaining. The Spartans are just glad to have a stadium to call home.
“We (also) pay for refs and security,” Moore said. “(The school) has nothing to gain by having us here. We’re just a bunch of guys, in their eyes, coming together to play football, which you could do on any other day. But as soon as we put a name ourselves, it gets very expensive.”
Players not only pay a fee to play for the Spartans, but also purchase their own equipment. And with 30 to 40 players on the roster, that can make things a little tricky with substitutions.
“That’s tough. You get that a lot,” Moore admitted. “Guys are like, ‘I paid to be here.’ You have the guys on occasion who have exceptional athletic ability and they can’t afford to play and they’re scooting out there a little bit more.
“It’s definitely a hassle and you feel bad. I not only play, I coach. And taking guys on and off the field, I hear it. It’s hard to look at a guy and tell him, ‘You’re just not that good.’ But we do have a few guys who paid their money and don’t get to play too much. That’s hard.”
But for the most part, many of the guys are just enjoying an opportunity to get out with the guys and play the game they participated in as kids.
“Most of these guys just played in high school,” Patterson said. “Maybe they got a year in college and it didn’t work out. But they’re just playing to play.” Gardner, who has drawn honors as one of the top defensive backs in semi-pro football, is one of the leaders of the group. A longtime youth coach, Gardner has played semi-pro football for years and doesn’t look at all out of place on the field with players half his age.
“I coached a lot of these guys,” Gardner yells across the field. “Now, I’m playing with them.”
On the other side, in terms of experience, is team punter Hans Hauge, who only recently graduated from Chartiers Valley High School.
“We’ve got guys in their 40s and kids as young as 18,” said Patterson. “The league rule is that if you’re still in high school, you can’t play if you’re participating in a spring sport.”
Games are played using NFL rules, with the exception of overtime, which reverts to college rules.
When Moore and Henderson were trying to organize the team during the winter, they found that a lot of people weren’t too sure about how the whole thing would work.
“We had coupon cards. We did a lot of fundraising,” Moore said. “We actually have a fifth quarter sponsor. We go to the Hofbrau in Canonsburg after every game. They let us do guest bartending to raise money. That helps a lot.
“Sponsorships help generate a lot of money for other teams. But to walk into a town with an idea that nobody else has done in this area, they kind of look at you like, ‘What are you trying to sell me? Semi-pro football? What is it? Backyard? Flag?’ Selling something in a market that had not been open to it yet was very difficult.”
But they have made it work in this first season. Next year, they expect bigger and better things.
“We plan on doing this for a long time,” said Patterson.