Swing shoulders blame for season

He wants it, and he’ll take it.
Any finger-pointing, any criticism, any jabbering that anybody might have towards the Muskie varsity (‘A’) football team’s season can be directed to head coach Bob Swing.
“I’ll take the heat for whatever they say negatively. That’s on me,” Swing said after the team’s 46-7 rout at the hands of the Oak Park Raiders here last Friday during the annual Homecoming game.
“It’s not the kids, it’s not the coaches, who work their tails off, it’s all on me,” he stressed. “I’m the front man, and the pretty good scores that we’ve taken lopsided, that’s on me.
“They are good football players, and anyone who understands the sport will realize that those are really good football teams that we are playing,” Swing added.
The Muskies were sporting a 1-4 record going into Friday’s Homecoming game and they knew things wouldn’t be easy against the undefeated Raiders, who were averaging 24.8 points/game while only allowing 13.4.
The only question was which Raiders team would show up here?
Would they be the Raiders with tailback Andrew Harris, regarded as the best player in the Winnipeg High School Football League, or without him.
When #20 stepped onto the field, the game’s outlook took a dramatic turn for the worse for the Muskies—which was evident on the Raiders’ opening drive as Harris swung around the outside to find the end zone.
“That kid that was playing tailback for them, he’s as good as you’re going to see anywhere, ever,” Swing said of Harris, who finished with four touchdowns.
“They [Oak Park] were healthy and loaded full barrel this week, and they came and fished Muskie,” he added.
Matters got worse later in the first half when Muskie quarterback Ty Griffith was sidelined due to a concussion.
It was unclear just when Griffith suffered the concussion, but whenever it did happen, he continued to play until the Muskie coaches realized he wasn’t well and benched him.
“It’s football and I didn’t want to quit,” said Griffith, who even returned to the sidelines later in the game after being taken to the hospital as a precautionary measure.
“This [was] my last Homecoming and they [were] making me sit out,” he remarked. “I just wanted to get out and play. I didn’t want to go out of the game.”
But cooler heads prevailed as Swing and his coaches didn’t even have to debate the matter—if you’re hurt, you’re not playing.
“We’ll never put a kid out there if we think he’s hurt,” Swing stressed. “My head prevails because I’ve lived it. Everybody talks about the old-school football days when a player did this and did that, and we learned a lot.
“And I learned that when you take those hits to the head, five or 10 years down the road, you might not be remembering something that you should be remembering.
“And that’s what we don’t want happening to these guys. These players are like my kids, and their safety is my first and foremost thought,” he added.
Joel Herbert took over as quarterback and did well considering he hasn’t had too many repetitions at the position. But it meant cutting the Muskies’ offensive playbook down to 30 percent of the pre-game plan.
“We couldn’t run the series that we wanted to run just because Joel didn’t have enough reps at it,” noted offensive co-ordinator Shane Beckett. “So that was hard because now we [had] to change our game plan, but Joel really stepped in there.”
The first half came to a close with the scoreboard showing a 39-0 lead for Oak Park, which not only embarrassed the Muskies and their faithful, who endured the damp, chilly weather, but incensed the team.
“We had some guys in the first half that not only didn’t execute their assignments, they just sort of stopped,” said Swing. “They stopped when they knew they didn’t do something right—they just stopped.”
But it also was a score that didn’t mean much in the Muskie locker-room during halftime. The black-and-gold close out the regular season here this Friday against the River East Kodiaks—and can jump up to sixth place in the eight-team ‘AA’ conference with a victory.
“As much as you don’t want to look forward, you want to worry about what’s happening right now, but we said that we’re going to set the tone for River East today and we had to come out and start playing River East in this second half,” said Swing.
And set the tone they did. The Muskies came out angrier than an old man trying to send soup back at a deli, and held the Raiders to only one touchdown in the second half while scoring one of their own.
“We just got really mad and everyone started a doing better,” said Jake Esselink.
“The first half was a problem,” said Johannes Gerber. “I’m part of the line and we didn’t really do as good as we should’ve. But the second half was a lot better and the line really held together.”
Tailback Thomas Edwards, who has been the focal point of the Muskie offence of late, took the ball from his own 50-yard line and was able to reach the Raiders’ three.
After two failed attempts, Edwards rumbled into the end zone on third and four—sparking a thunderous roar of approval from the fans as though he had just completed the 12 labours of Hercules.
“Second half we actually kicked some [butt]. We played good and we played together,” said Edwards.
“First half we played like [crap] and we were a little intimidated,” he admitted. “But the second half, we figured out that they weren’t as big as we thought they were, and we just went out there and kicked their [butt].”
The Muskies now must focus on this Friday’s game against the Kodiaks (2-4), which starts at 3:30 p.m. A win could move the Muskies into sixth place heading into the quarter-finals next week.
The squad also will be bolstered by the infusion of 13 Bantam (‘B’) players into the lineup, which Swing described as “massive for us.”
And he believes people shouldn’t judge the team on its 2004 season until they see them in action this Friday.
“If you’re going to get a good idea of what our team is, it’s going to be [this] week because it’s going to be our best week of practice that we’ve had all year.
“If people are going to judge us, judge us this week—that’s the week we want to be judged on,” Swing stressed.