August 2023

Coach's Corner

August 2023

The months of June, July and early August were spent training, conditioning and teaching basic offensive and defensive philosophies of the Quakers Football program. We had a healthy and hungry group of MOD/FRESH/JV/VAR athletes work at becoming stronger, faster and healthier.

Saturday, August 19th is the first day of Quakers Training Camp for FRESHMAN, JV and VARSITY. The MODIFIED 7th and MODIFIED 8th grade teams start on August 24th! You are reading that correctly, for the first time in program history we will have FIVE football teams. All with healthy roster numbers. We are grateful and cannot wait to grow the sport in the district!

I personally have a son entering his senior year. That also means his last year of travel hockey, school sports and HS classes! While his hockey season has recently started it could be his “last first day” of hockey. I can’t imagine not paying a hockey bill, traveling on away tournaments, going to a rink or cheering on my favorite team from the stands.

The senior parents on the VARSITY Quakers football team will soon realize what I recently have. This is the first of many lasts! Encourage your sons to be “all in”, encourage them to “stop and smell the roses” and personally enjoy your time in the stands supporting not only your son but his friends. The friends you’ve fed countless times, taken on vacations and had sleep over for years! We are a Buffalo Bills town and many also enjoy NCAA football but make no mistake there is nothing like high school football in OP. Nothing!

Enjoy the ride but take the time to appreciate the journey that many of you started when your sons were 5 or 6 years old! I look forward to meeting with all of you on August 26th in the OPHS Aud following Mr. Hack’s Fall Parent meeting for a program wide meeting also for the first time!

Mike Cieslik

#OPNE