We are going to the ‘ship… Last Sunday night, we won our semifinal game in commanding fashion to advance to the state championship game in Maryland’s top private school classification.
Our 30+ year veteran Equipment Manager at Gilman told me after our semifinal victory, “do you want to know the secret to our team’s success?” “It is your training.”
I was taken aback and honored to hear that. Accounting for the nationally-ranked championship teams and world class coaches he has seen in his lifetime at Gilman, to be recognized for the impact of my strength and conditioning program is high praise. Plus, my players are still thanking me for the grueling, punishing, but always fun(!) summer workout program I designed and administered that has helped us effortlessly outlast our opponents in a year in which the pundits said we were rebuilding and picked us to finish second to last.
For the first time in my football career spanning three decades as a high school player, college player, and high school coach, I will participate in a championship game and compete for the long coveted championship ring!
MIAA A Conference Championship Game will take place at Johns Hopkins University. It is essentially a home championship game for us given our close proximity and historic ties to Johns Hopkins as its feeder school in Gilman’s early days. We have other factors favoring us, already the huge underdogs for the championship game, in this Cinderella storybook season. However, storybooks do not write themselves.
We are writing the last chapter…