By Jared Serre
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Despite ending the high school football season with an eight-game losing streak, Trinity coach Marcus Law considers this year a success.
“We got guys to where we got the foundation of what we want to do for years coming forward,” he said.
Since 2014, the Warriors’ football team ceased to exist. Following a five-year hiatus, the school announced in March the team was due to hit the field once again in the fall.
Law, then an assistant at Morgantown, was brought on to serve as head coach of the jumpstart Warriors. For him and the team, it has been an uphill battle ever since.
“Honestly, if you look at it from my eyes, my biggest thing was putting 11 guys out there and being able to compete,” Law said. “One of the things, going into the season, we knew that our guys had a very low football IQ, and so we knew the challenge was to get that low football IQ up and that would help us compete as well.”
Trinity kicked off its season in week one with a 38-34 victory over Mapletown (Pa.). After following up the Week 1 win with a 42-0 triumph over Hannan High School in Week 2, things were looking up for the Warriors.
Despite the strong start, the success was short lived.
Come Week 3, Trinity fell to Fairport Harding (Ohio) by 50 points. After forfeiting their next matchup against the Maryland School for the Deaf, the Warriors lost out for the rest of the regular season.
Excluding the forfeit, over its eight-game losing streak, Trinity was outscored by its opponents 245-26. It didn’t help that the team was made up of primarily underclassmen with very little experience.
“Going into this season, we had no idea what we had as far as position-wise. We had an idea of what guys could do based on what they had done at the middle school level,” Law said. “When you put the football pads on, it’s a whole different world.”
Luckily for Trinity, the team’s youth is also a blessing as many key players are expected back for the 2020 season.
On offense, Davon Eldridge, who rushed for 493 yards and six touchdowns, will be a sophomore. Levi Teets and Calvin Blunt Jr., who each rushed for more than 200 yards, will also return.
Quarterback Drew Boczek, who connected for 539 yards and three touchdowns through the year before breaking his foot, does not graduate until 2023.
Defensively, Josh Rosen, who picked up three of the team’s five interceptions, is graduating, but Blunt Jr., who picked up the team’s lone defensive touchdown, will be a senior.
“I think our guys do have a will to want to get better,” Law said. “We look at playing the freshmen and sophomores that we have to — they had no choice but to grow up, and I think they’ll be in a better situation looking into next year.”
While Trinity is still likely to encounter struggles in its second season back from hiatus, Law said that it is nothing the team cannot handle.
“We’ve got some tough kids,” Law said. “We have kids that will not quit.”
