Grimsby Eagles join Tier 1 football loop

The Grimsby Eagles have decided to play with the Big Boys.

Following a successful season where Grimsby won the Niagara Region High School Athletic Association Tier 2 football championship with a 14-7 victory over the Eden Flyers, the Eagles have moved up to Tier 1 in 2018.

The school decided it would take on the challenge of competing at a higher level following a coaches meeting in June.

“We are at 900 kids so we should be in Tier 1,” head coach Zach Silverthorne said.

But the 2018 school population wasn’t the only factor in making the decision.

“We had just won (Tier) 2 and the old (unwritten) rule was that if you won Tier 2, you went up and the bottom of Tier 1 went back down,” he said. “Thorold went down and we went up.”

Silverthorne believes high school football should be more than just about the hardware at season’s end.

“You can’t win every year and it has to be about development,” he said.

The only question a school faces is when to make that leap to a higher calibre of ball.

“There is no good time so just go and figure it out,” Silverthorne said. “We will see where we end up, but we wanted to move up and get better. That is our whole philosophy.”

He was also tired of the same old, same old.

“In Tier 2, you were playing teams three times,” Silverthorne said. “Come the final game against Eden last year, there were no surprises,” he said. “That was why it was 14-7. There was one mistake each side.”

Although it has yet to be determined how exactly the playoffs will work, the two bottom teams in Tier 1 will drop down and compete in the Tier 2 playoffs.

“There was incentive to go up and if you’re not successful, there will still be playoffs,” he said,

Most coaches agree the ultimate goal is to have one tier of football and Grimsby will be playing in Tier 1 in the near future.

“When the new school comes, you are looking at 1,500 kids,” he said.

Silverthorne is already preparing for that eventuality.

“We’ve got to get more coaches and the goal next year is to have junior and senior (teams),” he said. “We have 15 juniors on our varsity team so it is getting close.”

For 2018, he wants to build on last year’s season.

“We brought the team back after seven years and we had success and then we won. That was a miracle.

“Our numbers are up but we have a lot of new kids.”

There are 46 kids out for football this season at Grimsby and the program launched with a one-week conditioning camp at the end of August. Silverthorne has no plans to follow schools like A.N. Myer where football is a year-long pursuit, including the summer.

“That’s too much, I think,” Silverthorne said. “Let them work, kids are farming and the kids are in shape. It’s just fine-tuning.”

He expects A.N. Myer and Greater Fort Erie to be the two top teams in the league.

“Then who knows?” he said. “We don’t really know because we don’t have any history with any of the other teams.

“If we are competitive when we play Westlane, Centennial and Sir Winston then that’s a bonus. If we win a couple, even better.”

If Grimsby struggles, it won’t be because of a lack of effort.

“We are going to give it everything we got and we have had success for a decade,” said Silverthorne, referring to the coaching staff that came from South Lincoln to Grimsby. “We know what we are doing and it’s whether or not they (players) buy into it.”

With touchdown machine Justin DeFaria not returning for his 12B year at Grimsby, the Eagles will be relying on the play of returning tailback Ryan Neudorf.

“He’s the academic honour roll, in the band, starting tailback kind of kid,” Silverthorne said.”He worked out the whole summer.”

Neudorf also provides the Eagles with intangibles.

“He leads by example because he’s a quiet kid and he’s a smart kid and he can learn on the fly,” he said. “He’s our horse and we just give him the ball and see what happens.”

The 15-year-old developed a lot starting at tailback last year when he was in Grade 10.

“I learned tons,” he said. “It was learning how to cooperate with your team and figuring out what defences were doing in comparison to what I was doing,”

By the end of the season, he had a good idea what he needed to work on to take his game to the next level.

“I knew I had to get as many yards as I could and hold on to the ball as best as I could.”

The 5-foot-11, 160-pounder spent his summer working out in the gym to get ready for football.

“I wanted to get stronger and bigger.”

Neudorf is confident the Eagles can succeed in Tier 1 football.

“I think we’re going to do great and we look really good,” he said. “We have a bunch of new guys from BDSS (Beamsville District Secondary School) and it’s going to be great.”

Like his coach, he’s 100 per cent in favour of moving up.

“It’s being able to play against different teams and against better competition.

“For the love of the game, it’s going to be good.”