JV breeds varsity success

If you believe the football coaches at Northeastern, next year could be a special season for the Eagles.

You see, in 2007, Northeastern’s JV team had an undefeated season. Northeastern coaches believe that success carried over into the next season when the varsity Eagles went 11-2 and won the Northeastern Coastal Conference championship. If history is to repeat itself, the story began on Thursday when the JV Eagles beat Edenton 21-12 in the season finale to complete their second 10-0 season in three years.

“If you have the talent, it should start showing,’ JV head coach Bruce Phillips said. “It’s the same things as the JV group the year before last. We went unbeaten and the next year we won a conference championship and two-thirds of those JVs were on that conference championship team and they had never lost and they expected to win.”

There are several components to the program’s success, both at the JV and varsity levels. It begins with the relationship between the varsity and the JV team. The same coaches are involved with each team and run the same system.

“(Head varsity football) coach (Antonio) Moore does not abandon his JVs,” Phillips said. “We practice with the varsity, so they get the same coaching that the varsity does, the same technique. We have a real good off-season program. They work hard. No JV team in this area of the state work as hard physically as these JVs do. They’re tough.”

Some of that toughness showed through on Thursday as the Eagles fell behind 6-0 early and struggled stopping the Aces’ running attack and had rouble holding on to the football on offense. After quarterback Reakwon Harney broke free for a 45-yard score late in the first half, Northeastern shut down the run in the second and tacked on two more scores, both on Harney passes, for a 21-6 lead, which sealed the victory.

“This program in football expects you to win,” Phillips said. “Hopefully, we’re setting the standards in a lot of sports that way. You raise the bar.”

Part of the team’s success over the years comes from the type of player that enters the program and how they enter. Many of the core group of this year’s JV squad have little experience with losing, rising from the Rampage youth program to middle school and now to the JV.

“The type of kids that are coming are kids that already know how to play football,” Moore said. “If you start off early, like at the Rampage, they already know how to tackle, know how to make contact. So they’re coming in not scared to hit anybody being that they played physical football, instead of tag of flag.”

In Moore’s five-year tenure as varsity coach, the Eagles have won two NCC titles and have been the top 2A seed inthe 2A/3A split conference in four of the five seasons, this being the first time the Eagles will enter the playoffs as a No. 2. That success is born when kids walk out the door at River Road Elementary School.

“They come over as soon as school is out in June and start working,” Moore said. “I issue them a locker. When they see that locker, it brightens their summer and they feel involved. And we work hard, we work really hard.”

But at Northeastern, it is not just about performance on the field. Off the field, players are expected to do as much, if not more than, the average student.

“Right now our varsity team is over 3.0 GPA. The JV team is 2.4,” Moore said. “I truly believe the teams that have the smarter players end up being more successful. You need a safety back there that is smart to read a coverage. You need to have a lineman that knows if they’re going unbalanced. Like I told them today, an athlete that just worries about sport and not academics is gone.”

That is exemplified by the six JV players that Moore is bringing up to varsity for tonight’s season finale and the playoffs. There are other JV players with the ability to make the move, but their off-field standards were not up to par.

“I think it’s a reward,” Moore said. “You don’t get rewarded to come up to play with the varsity just because you’re the best athlete on the team, you get rewarded because you do what you’re supposed to do in the classroom as well as on the field. Those kids I brought up did everything we asked of them. We asked them to raise their standard academically, we asked them to raise their standard on the field and we asked them to be a model citizen walking down the hallway. And those are the kids we want in our program.”

For the entire football program, the JV team going 10-0 means a lot more than a perfect winning percentage.

“To these kids, it was very important,” Phillips said. “These kids expect to win. It was important to me, because it was important to them. They’re going to carry this for a long time. This is a seed that’s been planted that’s going to grow into a very strong varsity program.”