Young Smyrna football team hopes to grow up fast

SMYRNA — Nathan Roscoe was just nine the first time Smyrna High played in the Division I football state championship game.

A big crowd was in the Delaware Stadium stands that December day in 2015 when the Eagles out-lasted Salesianum in overtime.

To a little kid like Roscoe, it seemed like the biggest thing in the world.

“I remember the whole (Smyrna) side was red,” he remembered. “I mean it was just packed. It felt it was a college game playing in a college stadium.

“You can’t beat this,” he thought. “I can’t wait to get up there and play.”
Roscoe and a lot of his teammates grew up watching and then being a part of Smyrna’s run of five DIAA state-title game appearances in the past nine seasons.

Now that they’re seniors, those players want to keep the Eagles among the top programs in the state.

But it won’t be easy.

Smyrna had only 10 juniors on last year’s squad, which finished 4-7 but still made the program’s eighth state tournament appearance in the last nine years.

The Eagles open the season on Aug. 30 at Wilmington’s Abessinio Stadium with an 8 p.m. game against Downingtown West, Pa. in the Pigskin Classic. Smyrna then hosts defending Class 3A state champion Salesianum the following week.

Difficult or not, Smyrna’s goal is still to be competitive week-in and week-out.

“With this group, I feel like they’re young but they’re hungry,” said senior linebacker Me’Kenzie Square-Ward. “They learn fast. Once they get it, they start to go.

“I’m excited to see what this young group has to do for Smyrna this year.”

Smyrna coach Mike Judy has only five seniors returning in the starting lineup. With his son, Grayson, now a sophomore center, he has seen a number of the current Eagles play since they were little kids.

Judy can remember some of them playing on the tackling dummies when they were youngsters.

“It is cool to see,” he said. “A lot of these guys came up through the middle school. We used to go out and see these guys in Pop Warner and go help coach their teams.

“I know where they came from. I saw them when they first put on the pads. Now that they’re here, the sense of community goes through the roof. And it also reminds me that I’m old.”

Last season was a tough one for Smyrna. Three of its six regular-season losses came by a total of only seven points.

The Eagles then proved they were better than their record by losing to Sallies just 41-40 in the DIAA Class 3A state quarterfinals. The contest wasn’t decided until the Sals scored a controversial last-second touchdown.

The heartbreaker was another reminder about not giving up on a season but also how every play in a game could end up being important.

“It just makes us want to work harder — especially all the guys that were there and have returned,” said Roscoe, an offensive guard. “It makes us just try harder to make that not happen this year and hopefully make it a completely different season this year.”

“I tell people now, we’ve just got to do more,” said Square-Ward. “It’s the one point that actually matters.

“I remind them (his teammates) all the time, that feeling that we had last year was not a good feeling. I’m pretty sure the young group of guys we have understand that. They know what we went through. They’ve seen us cry, they’ve seen us fall and they’ve seen our ups and downs.”

What kind of season Smyrna has this fall may well be decided by how quickly its young new players can grow into starting roles.

The Eagles showed last season that an 0-3 start didn’t stop them from being a good team by the end of the year. After watching the program’s success over the past decade, they expect to find a way to come through.

“With the young guys we have now, they know what the standard is,” said Square-Ward. “We talk about it every day at practice — the standard. We have a high standard right now that we expect the young boys to meet.”

“The goal is always to raise the trophy at the end of the year,” said Roscoe. “It’s always a goal to push these guys as hard as we can, and as best we can, to get them better.”