By John Raffel
Good times continue to prevail for Ithaca’s football team, as the winning streak has hit 60 games. But coach Terry Hessbrook points out that a few times during that streak, the Yellowjackets have had to battle from behind to keep it going.
The closest game the Yellowjackets had in the first four of the 2014 season was a 33-14 win over Michigan Lutheran Seminary. But Seminary had a 14-13 halftime lead.
“It seems like in every big game we’ve played in, we’ve been behind,” Hessbrook said. “We were behind in four out of five playoff games last year. In the last couple of years, you go back to 2011 when we went to Montrose, were behind 13-0 on the road. We were behind Iron Mountain. We were behind in the state finals. We won’t panic as a staff, and we don’t panic as players.
“You make your adjustments and your changes you have to make and go out and do what you have to do. You have to play four quarters of football. It doesn’t matter after the first quarter if you’re ahead or behind, you still have to play the second quarter.”
Hessbrook also noted that his team has faced its share of adversity in some state title games before prevailing. The point is that whenever the Yellowjackets do fall behind, they’re not running into unfamiliar territory. Being behind when the final gun goes off, though, has obviously been unfamiliar for more than four years.
Preparation for the game and implementation of the game plan has usually stayed unchanged, Hessbrook pointed out. “Every team you have is certainly different,” Hessbrook said. “You try to figure out what it’s going to be, whether it’s motivation or what. We keep things pretty much the same year after year.”
Practice times and everything else related to football stays pretty much uniform in Hessbrook’s datebook. “I don’t like a lot of change,” he said. “Our pregame, we try to keep it the same. We try to keep our routine during the week the same.”
Ithaca entered the season with some question marks, since there were only five returning seniors. But the team also has a large junior class. “We’re right about where I expected them to be,” Hessbrook said after the fourth game. “Our defense is playing very well. Our front seven has been outstanding the first four weeks. In the last three games combined, we’ve allowed 45 yards rushing. When you’re able to stop the run, you can do so many other things. We were concerned having so many young faces. As the season goes and as our players get more repetitions and more experience on the field, hopefully come playoff time, we’ll be a team to be reckoned with.”
The 60-game win streak has obviously brought a lot of national and state attention on the Yellowjackets. Hessbrook agreed that it doesn’t appear that the extra attention has bothered his team one bit. “I think it’s a real positive thing for our players, for our community, for our program,” he said. “There are a lot of people talking about it. At 7 p.m. Friday night, when the game kicks off, it’s another high school football game. Our job as coaches is to keep them focused during the week and make sure the preparation is where it needed to be. The streak, I think we’re tied for something like 19th place right now in the United States for the longest win streak in football.
“We understand it’s going to come to an end at some point. We don’t want it to, and we’ll work our tails off to avoid that. We’ll keep playing and doing what we do.”