Coming back around: A familiar situation for new Holbrook/Avon football coach

For the Holbrook/Avon football program , the middle of August marks the start of yet another season. For Fran Cass, it’s a full circle moment.

After 12 years away, Cass is returning to lead the program which gave him his very first head-coaching position.

“It’s really about just wanting to coach again,” Cass said about why he wanted to come back. “There’s a lot of good people at both of those schools that are still there from my time there that I really would like to coach with.”

Cass started with the program in 2004 and coached there for eight years. He coached the team to back-to-back 6-2 seasons in his final two years. In 2011, Holbrook/Avon nearly came away with the Mayflower League Small School Division title, falling to Nantucket in the last game of the season.

In 2012, Holbrook/Avon fell just one win short of creating a three-way tie for first place in the division.

While coaching at Holbrook/Avon, Cass also began as the head coach of the South Shore Outlaws of the New England Football League. He was also a longtime assistant coach and former player of the Middleboro Cobras in the Eastern Football League.

More: 'Passion never leaves': Carver High's new football coach has seen all parts of the game

After leaving in 2012, Cass later served as Wareham High's head coach starting in 2018. Former Holbrook/Avon head coach Mike Walsh stepped down in 2023 after two seasons as head coach. When the position opened up, Cass received a call regarding the opening, and he decided to take a shot at it.

Last season, Holbrook/Avon finished with a 4-4 record, and 28th in the final MIAA power rankings for Division 8, missing the state playoffs. The program also missed the state tournament in 2021 despite finishing with a 5-2 record.

In his final two seasons at Wareham, the program finished with losing records, and struggled with roster size throughout his time there.

Cass said that small programs, like Holbrook/Avon and Wareham, typically struggle with roster numbers and attracting veteran head coaches.

"You usually don't find that these schools get experienced coaches," Cass said. "It's usually a young guy who's trying to get his first job. That was me."

With more than two decades of coaching experience, a number of those schools reached out to Cass for openings this year, and he settled on the program that originally took him on as a new coach 20 years ago.

"It's a better situation, in their opinion, than when I was there previously," Cass said. "With a new school, a new facility, just some better dynamics."

Cass is familiar with the challenges faced with coaching some of the smallest high school programs in the state. He gives the school a timeframe on how long he will stay with the program to build, and if the teams aren't competitive by his specified amount of time, he steps down to allow someone else to come in.

Coming into this season, he hopes to build a culture centered around having a passion for the game.

“For me, the biggest thing is an interest in the sport of football,” Cass said. “That, to me, is what I look for most in these kids.”

Cass cited that compared to just a few years ago, less high schools have all three levels of football now, especially smaller schools that struggle to maintain large rosters, which was one of his biggest challenges during his time at Wareham. He said that he believes Division 8 is the hardest to coach in football due to the numbers.

"The numbers are so tough, that we thought it might be better to give someone else a chance to try and make them more competitive,' Cass said about leaving Wareham.

Here at Holbrook/Avon, he wants student-athletes to have a drive and intrigue in the sport, so that maybe those numbers grow during his tenure.

“It’s more rare that you have three levels. So, for me, it’s hoping that there are kids that want to love to play the sport.”

This article originally appeared on The Enterprise: Coming back around: A familiar situation for new Holbrook/Avon football coach