Third time a charm?

By Ashley Hargrove
ashley@athensnews-courier.com

August 04, 2008 10:10 pm

— Tracy Malone has an eager group of seniors on his hand.
Ever since the season ended last year, the Ardmore football coach saw it in their eyes that they were determined to have a successful senior season. And with the way things have been going, he feels the sky is the limit for them.
“These guys are real hungry,” Malone said. “They’ve been on a roller coaster ride ever since they started and I think now they’re ready to make their mark in the program. They’ve worked hard and have done everything we ask them to do. I feel like they realized last year that things just didn’t go our way, and instead of tuning us out, they finished the season out and started helping us evaluate everything so that we could make things better. I really think that made them buy into this being their program.”
After only winning nine games in a three-year period, it would have been easy for the Ardmore seniors––who were sophomores during Malone’s first year–– to call it quits. But they didn’t.
Instead, this group faced the challenge head on and decided to take Malone’s words to heart.
“After the season ended last year, Coach Malone told us he didn’t feel like we were as close of a team as we should have been,” Brewer Widner said. “So this summer, we’ve really tried to start hanging out more. We decided that after the last game last season that we didn’t want to go out with a season like we had last year. We really worked hard this summer so hopefully things will payoff.”
Judging from the enthusiasm Malone has been seeing during the offseason, the leadership that goes along with the 14 returning seniors is already paying off.
“The leadership our seniors have shown so far has been great,” Malone said. “The big thing they asked early on is if we could set an attendance policy for the summer but with the way the AHSAA rules are we couldn’t do that — we can’t make them mandatory. But we did set team goals and the team met that. Those guys have been committed to getting better and its rubbed off on the younger guys. They see them working hard and being leaders and it lets them know that hard work is important.”

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