This week’s Q&A

Boardman’s Joe Ignazio

Joe Ignazio played football at Boardman High and has been an assistant coach with the Spartans for several years. He was hired as head coach in February.

Much was made at the start of the season of Boardman’s low turnout for football, the varsity roster includes just 40 players.

The Spartans dropped their first five games of the season then got their first win of the season last week, beating Perry 7-0.

Q. How did it feel to get the first win?

A. It’s certainly a relief to get the first one under your belt. It wasn’t a pretty win, but a win is a win and we’ll take one any time. Hopefully it can kick-start the program.

Q. How did the kids react to the win?

A. It was good to see smiles on their faces, they’ve worked really hard. A lot has been stacked against them to this point and they haven’t quit. That’s what I am most proud of about this group, with all the adversity they’ve faced — the lack of participation, a coaching change, new faces — they’ve handled everything with a lot of maturity.

Q. How have you been able to keep the players’ heads up during an 0-5 start?

A. I attribute that to a great staff. They’ve been willing each week to come in and prepare. Our coaches are a competitive group, they don’t like to lose and they want to find any way they can to get a win and make everybody happy.

Q. How has your team progressed through the season?

A. We’ve continued to get better if you look at us against Fitch and then against Perry, especially on defense. Early on we were playing kids with not a lot of experience, we were asking kids to move positions and on top of that our numbers were not good and we were playing a lot of young kids. This year has been one of those perfect storms but the kids have battled, they continue to show up and they’re willing to learn. The effort was good against Fitch, we played better on both sides of the ball and it came to a head against Perry. We moved the ball well, we had close to 400 yards but penalties killed us, so the 7-0 score was not an indicator of how well we played. We are getting better and better and the attitude is phenomenal.

Q. How are the numbers at the lower levels and what is your assessment of the future of the program?

A. We’ve been doing a lot of things. I have a good rapport with the coaches at the middle schools and one of the concerns early was cutting kids at the middle school level. We had a meeting and to discuss not cutting kids and we are working toward that. Our middle school numbers usually are good and the freshman class is at 48 and they are 4-1. The future looks good but that has taken a lot of hard work with the staff, there were a number of things we had to do. We didn’t anticipate numbers as bad as they were and we are doing some things to attack that problem. The program was sick and we need to have a remedy.

Q. What about the team you face this week, Hoover, also 1-5?

A. Hoover is a good team, they were a little banged up early, but obviously they are well-coached. The quarterback is athletic and they have some kids they want to get the ball to. They try to get you unbalanced and outflanked. By no means are we taking them lightly. With a win under our belt we’ve preached all week that consistency is important. We’ve talked about how they feel now that they’ve had a taste of winning and how we want to make it contagious. It comes down to preparation Monday through Thursday, working hard and wanting to keep it rolling.SFlb

Interview by Vindicator sports writer Doug Chapin. Email him at dchapin@vindy.com