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Football season is near
June 3, 2008High school football season is closer than you think. In only two months, players will be reporting for summer workouts.
Seven-on-seven has already started too. I have even begun to type in schedules for the TRN football preview edition in my spare time at work.
And although the area's 11-man teams have had a small coaching turnover this offseason (Petrolia is the only one I know of), an interesting development happened yesterday.
Seymour coach David Fambrough is leaving for Breckenridge after one very successful season with the Panthers.
For Seymour people, this is significant for many reasons:
1. It is very late in the game to find a new coach. At this stage, everyone looking has pretty much found someplace. I am sure they will get plenty of candidates, but the best ones have probably relocated already.
2. I am not saying Seymour will be bad next year, but let's face the facts. A lot of the players who took the Panthers to the Class A title game have graduated. That makes this job a little less sexy.
3. I have not talked to Superintendent Baker in length yet, and I am not sure how many, if any, assistants Fambrough may take with him.
But I think it will be unlikely they hire within because with the exception of one, all the Seymour assistants were there a year ago when the job came open and Baker hired looked outside then.
4. If they do look outside, then this will be the third system Seymour has run in the last three years. This will not help, especially with so many young faces around.
5. I get the idea that this really caught some Seymour people by surprise. Fambrough was not looking at leaving; rather, Breckenridge called him and kept improving its offer until he could not turn it down. Fambrough had family in Breckenridge, which had something to do with his choice.
I am sure the Panthers figured Fambrough was a guy who was going to stay a while and continue to build the program up, and now they will be looking for their third coach in as many years.
Don't get me wrong -- I am not saying Seymour will not be able to find a good coach or that they will not have a successful season this year.
But this definitely was a pretty big setback.
On another note, later this week I will blog about some of my thoughts concerning quirky scheduling I noticed when looking over football schedules.
Posted by at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
