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YCSD adds second middle school football team
By Dan Hiner
Youngstown
The Chaney football team isn’t the only Youngstown program reappearing for the 2019 season. The Youngstown City School District announced the creation of a second middle school football program.
Youngstown will have teams for Northeast and South Junior High Schools. The Northeast roster will be filled with children from the North and East sides while South will handle the South and West sides.
Northeast will feed into the East High School program and South will feed into Chaney. Both teams will feature students from community or charter schools that don’t have football programs.
Practice began on Monday for both programs. Northeast practice will run from 3:45 p.m. to 6 p.m. at East High School. South practice will be held at Wilson Elementary School from 4 p.m. to 6:15 p.m.
“I think it’s a win-win,” said Rick Shepas, Youngstown City Schools athletic director. “It’s a win-win for the kids, it’s a win-win for the parents.
“What we’re really trying to do is using the athletic programs of all types and all varieties to raise young boys and girls. Because [the children] like to participate in sports, the have the opportunity to get them into a bigger and brighter future in academics.”
Raymond Marrow is the head coach for Northeast. Jason Ray, Trent Winford, Dreone Fox and Norman Carter are assistant coaches. Marrow is a former Arena, indoor and European football player. He also ran the Academy4Athletes camp.
Ronnie Casey Jr., a 20-year coaching veteran, will lead South. C.R. Mickel, Dominique Thomas, Jason Morell and Brian Jenkins will assist Casey.
“We’re lucky, we’re lucky,” Shepas said. “We got some good guys.”
Youngstown had one middle school program for the last several years. The program had 32 players in 2017, Shepas’ first year. The team grew to 70 to 80 players last season, and Youngstown expects 45 to 60 players for each team this season.
“In true middle school football, all equipment is provided by the district,” Shepas said. “We will provide instruction for them, meals after school, transportation and monitoring academic performance.”
The schedules for the teams are still to be announced. The schedules will require some travel with schools like Steubenville and Akron East mixed in with other area teams.
Rick said the teams could potentially use Rayen Stadium and the fields at East and Chaney.
“Those are all ‘To be announced,’” Shepas said. “We’ll play that off of the type of punishment Rayen Stadium can handle while it remains grass until we get some initiatives going to improve our circumstances there.”
East varsity head coach Brian Marrow and Chaney head coach Chris Amill will help oversee the middle school programs. Shepas said the varsity basketball coaches had the same responsibility last season, and expects all varsity coaches in Youngstown athletics to follow the same model.
“We want [the coaches] to be directly involved in the philosophy and how the programs are run, directly involved in the culture in developing those programs,” Shepas said. “Those are the kids who will be in the varsity programs.”