How South Eugene football is learning to tackle, to win — and perhaps, to endure

Editor’s note: This is the third story in a continuing series about the effort to revive the football program at South Eugene High School. Read the first part here and the second part here.

The blocking sled at South Eugene High School creaks when it’s pushed. The rusted metal sleeves, bones of an old program, are bent from use, then disuse. The stitches on the black man-shaped pads have begun to come undone. The scratched blue-purple Rogers logo on the side has nearly faded out of sight.

On Sept. 23, South Eugene football head coach Eric Scott, his team kneeling around him, talked at the end of a practice about discipline and desire. On the side of it all, flecks of turf and sweat dotted the low end of the sled.

Two hours earlier, the Axe had begun their first offensive-focused day of what served as the rivalry week for their program this year — a matchup against North Eugene High School’s junior varsity 2 team. 

Two days earlier, they had endured a quiet 2½ hour bus ride home after their 44-28 loss to Crater. During the ride, they’d recognized they had fallen victim to overconfidence after an earlier road win in Lebanon.

Finally, a team desperate to prove it can play the game at a higher level put shoulders to the pads on the sled. Rusted metal ground against concrete, then slid over turf as the sled made its way onto the field. It spun, then aligned on the 50-yard line. Then, the Axe waited.

At the beckon of a whistle, the first group of five players took the sled nearly 23 yards, from the halfway point to the 27-yard line of a field not used to this particular type of wear. In the offseason, only the linemen had used the sled. Now, the whole team shouldered the burden, and learned, as junior Ja Barkley-Jones said later, that they could feel when someone wasn’t pushing.

So the sled was more than just another drill during just another practice.

It was a lesson Scott wanted to teach, as part of his work — as part of his team’s work — to rebuild the culture of a football program that had languished since the pandemic. For South Eugene, this has been a season of rebuilding, including a decision to cancel its varsity schedule and play some junior-varsity games.

“We needed everybody to know that we have to count on each other,” Scott said later. “Everyone has to continue to push this thing — not just the sweat literally, but push the program and keep pushing it forward, no matter how much resistance we get.” 

The sled slowed. Five new players approached. 

“Get it in the end zone,” offensive coordinator Jay Mitchell said. “Ready.” 

Whistle.

The sled took off, the right side surging ahead of the left, then veered back close to even as it crossed the 10-yard line.

“Through the line!” Mitchell yelled. “Through the line!”

The left side swung through the goal line. The right, stuck a half-yard from the thick white stripe, did not, and the old tired sled pivoted on its edge like a veteran center stuck at the top of the key. These kids were not experienced at pushing a sled.

Another whistle sounded.

“Through the line!” Mitchell said.

The next generation

Ensuring that underclassmen are signing up to play football is one of South Eugene’s greatest challenges as it attempts to rebuild its program.

During a film session after the North Eugene game, an assistant coach sifted through tape and mused openly about how he wished he had another year to work with a talented lineman. 

Whether that player will be replaced at all is an open question. Running back Daniel Jetty, linebacker Theo Unruh and slot Dash Fortner are among the eight seniors on South’s 23-man roster who’ll have to be replaced when the season ends by students who want to join the program.

“We have to continue to show kids that it’s more than just football,” Scott said. “We care about them on and off the field. We have to show them that we want to earn their trust and that we trust them, show them that we believe in them and keep on trying to bring excitement to the football program.”

Five days after the practice with the sled, Scott stood on the field pregame at South Eugene, shielded from his skill players’ warmup drills behind sunglasses and a script ‘South’ cap.

He pointed out a student perched in the stands whom he said had joined the team originally, then opted to leave the program before the first game, after coaches spotted him skipping practice and attempted to confront him.

Then, Scott started talking about Trae Ford.

“He just plays like he’s 7 feet tall, man,” Scott said.

Ford, by his own estimation, is 5-foot-6 on a tall day. When the Axe traveled to Lebanon Sept. 14 and the freshman wore his white No. 3 jersey for the first time, coaches had to help him bunch it up so it wouldn’t tangle around his thigh pads.

Two weeks later, watching Ford go through drills before the North Eugene game, Scott said: “He’s starting at safety today.”

That’s normally junior starting quarterback Colby Yeager’s position, but with just 21 players on the roster and available to play, Scott and defensive backs coach Maleec Jannah decided to let Yeager sit out some defensive possessions. That meant Ford got his chance.

Ford had been preparing for the moment. The previous Friday, he huddled around a phone watching game film at his house, with Jetty, Barkley-Jones and Kai Jones.

And two days before that, when South was practicing tackling on the softer outfield grass of the baseball field that abuts the grass practice area, Ford remembered “not being able to make a tackle.” 

His battle — and the rest of the team’s — is about overcoming fear, in Jannah’s eyes.

Ford’s determination gives other players “the confidence in themselves to actually be able to do those same things,” Jannah said. “Because we have a lot of athletes on the team, but with it being their first year playing any type of football, that is a thing: being nervous about taking another man down. (It’s) ‘There’s another kid on the field, and he wants to run into me, and I want to run into him.’

“But having that fear and overcoming it is big and key.”

Learning to win

On its first possession of the North Eugene game, after the Axe forced an interception to open the quarter, Barkley-Jones scored on a 13-yard run — helped by a thumping block from freshman wideout Fisher Anderson.

Two days later, in the film room, Scott only had an hour to go through tape and recap what happened next. They dissected the first two possessions — the interception, then the Barkley-Jones score — before the clock hit 6 p.m., the usual ending time for practices.

No one stood up.

Instead, at the behest of Jannah, leaning back on a bench in the rear of the room, Scott navigated to play No. 46. That’s the first snap of the Highlanders’ second possession, with Ford playing as the single-high safety.

“Look at Trae. Look how he’s down in his stance,” Scott said.

He rolled the tape. The North Eugene quarterback handed off left. Ford triggered downhill. He slowed and squared his hips when the Highlanders’ running back feinted right, then detonated into the ball carrier’s knees and drove him to the ground. The film room, packed with sweaty teenage brains raised on NFL hit montages and a thin line between careful technique and gladiatorial joy, exploded with cries of “HUUUUH!” and “TRAEEEE!”

“I’m not going to lie, it did hurt a little bit,” Ford said. “And I kind of got run over, but I stayed wrapping up, and it was great to get my first tackle.”

Ford is one of three freshmen, and six underclassmen, on the Axe’s roster.

Anderson is another. He caught three touchdowns in the North Eugene game — including a Randy Moss-esque snatch off the helmet of a North Eugene defensive back on a backyard-football play where he and Yeager made a play call on the fly.

“Our young guys are really growing up,” Scott said after the game. “Our freshmen, our sophomores, who we’re really relying on, are growing up.”

At halftime of the North Eugene game, with the Axe up 22-0 courtesy of a Jetty run and a 90-yard Barkley-Jones pick-six, the locker room was bumping — ”Hey, what’s up, Trae?!” was the refrain. Mitchell, the offensive coordinator with the whistle and the penchant for the sled, got his chance to speak.

“Hey fellas, we’re getting in the end zone, dawg,” Mitchell said. “Listen up, though — line, do not get complacent. Receivers, do not get complacent. I want you running through blocks, just like you do on that sled, understand?”

North Eugene bagged a pair of long rushing touchdowns of its own, plus a goal-line score and a 9-yard receiving touchdown in the second half. Anderson caught his three scores, 23-, 16- and 38-yard receptions, all in the third quarter. Jetty scored three more — 56-, 58- and 2-yard touchdowns — in the fourth.

But South Eugene still isn’t used to winning. Scott was worried about blowing it until the final whistle blew. He kept glancing up at the scoreboard — the same one he could barely see from the weight room steps three weeks earlier, after officials ejected him from the team’s opener — until it finally read 64-30 at the buzzer.

Afterward, with the team gathered in a huddle in the end zone, the head coach got his first chance to address the team after a win. He didn’t have that chance at the first, when he was serving that suspension.

He pointed back over his right shoulder at the scoreboard.

“That’s what happens when you practice the right way,” he said. “That’s four good quarters of football.”

Over his left shoulder, the sled rested in the background.

South Eugene will play three more games this season, including its home finale in a rematch with Lebanon Oct. 29.

It will try to make football desirable amid a month of high school postseason sports in which it will not participate. That’s Scott’s conundrum: to discover how not to fight this battle every year. The smiles that Ford and Fisher and Yeager wore as he spoke that night suggested that the battle will get easier.

“I’m happy, man,” Scott said. “Words can’t describe how I feel right now.”

Later, he chose one: relief.

The Axe are scheduled to play Thursday, Oct. 8 at McNary High School in Keizer. Kickoff is 6 p.m. 

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of Trae Ford.