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My son is now a Sophomore at Firelands HS. We've been following the team since we moved into the area 4 years ago, but we've been in the county for quite a while. One thing we knew was that Firelands sucked at football.

Firelands hasn't had a winning season since 1997. In fact, they hadn't won more than three games in a season in 13 years.

This year, a strong senior class, a strange coaching change, a ton of adversity, and a conference change has turned a perennial bottom feeder team into a 10-0 conference champion. Last year, they had more injuries to starters than I have fingers. They had a coach forced to resign just before a game last year.

This year, the school is taking its first ever 10-win team to its first ever OHSAA playoff game.

It's really been unbelievable, and this story from Terry Pluto in the Cleveland Plain Dealer at first surprised me. The more I think about it, it just explained a whole lot.

Thought it was neat and thought I would share.

Falcon30 wrote:My son is now a Sophomore at Firelands HS. We've been following the team since we moved into the area 4 years ago, but we've been in the county for quite a while. One thing we knew was that Firelands sucked at football.

Firelands hasn't had a winning season since 1997. In fact, they hadn't won more than three games in a season in 13 years.

This year, a strong senior class, a strange coaching change, a ton of adversity, and a conference change has turned a perennial bottom feeder team into a 10-0 conference champion. Last year, they had more injuries to starters than I have fingers. They had a coach forced to resign just before a game last year.

This year, the school is taking its first ever 10-win team to its first ever OHSAA playoff game.

It's really been unbelievable, and this story from Terry Pluto in the Cleveland Plain Dealer at first surprised me. The more I think about it, it just explained a whole lot.

Thought it was neat and thought I would share.

That is a really good story and major congratulations go to that team and coach. Best of luck to them against Chagrin Falls!

Terry Pluto is an excellent writer, who usually comes up with a few "human interest" stories each season...This is certainly one of them... They obviously will be huge underdogs to Chagrin, one of the stronger teams in the state, but that's why they play the games, right?

Terry Pluto has written some excellent books about basketball...my favorite was Loose Balls, the definitive history of the ABA.

Being the team to end years of abject failure...That's got to be the thrill of a lifetime for the coach and those kids...

It's too bad their schedule didn't offer more computer points for them. An 8 has beaten a 1 before since they expanded to 8 teams a region but they are playing a really good 1.

Congrats to them on their stellar season. But the fact they went 10-0 and barely got in as the 8th seed speaks volumes as to how weak their was. Over in our area, Bryan went 8-2 against mostly smaller schools and missed the playoffs while Napoleon is in the same region, went 5-5 against mostly bigger schools, and got the 7th seed.

Warthog wrote:Congrats to them on their stellar season. But the fact they went 10-0 and barely got in as the 8th seed speaks volumes as to how weak their was. Over in our area, Bryan went 8-2 against mostly smaller schools and missed the playoffs while Napoleon is in the same region, went 5-5 against mostly bigger schools, and got the 7th seed.

Yeah they are divison III school and they play mostly division IV and V schools. Only play a couple teams in division III. I know going into the the last week of the season they still weren't sure if they would make the playoffs even if they won. ...I remember that one year Walsh Jesuit made it going 3-6. Beating a bunch of 2-8 teams doesn't get you anything in Ohio.

Unfortunately Chagrin Falls beat them 66-14.

Definitely not the ending they wanted, but after all those years of disappointment, 10-1 is a heck of a good way to go out.

I really hope they continue their success next year! Best of luck to the Falcons!