Table of Contents
The Winchester High Red & Black football team (5-2) had an action-packed Senior Night planned ahead of its seventh game of the season. However, Middlesex League rival Lexington had to forfeit Thursday night’s (Oct. 22) game at Knowlton Stadium, because it was unable to safely field a team after losing so many junior and senior players.
As a result, Winchester shifted its game plan to a fun-focused afternoon. They spent the day playing an intrasquad scrimmage that mixed the seniors with the freshmen and sophomores, and Coach Wally Dembowski said it got the team talking more than ever before.
“It was awesome that the seniors were playing with the freshmen and sophomores,” Dembowski said. “[Overall], we had more talking going on in practice this week than we’ve had all season long, because they all want to win.”
Dembowski went on to say that the individual reactions were more telling during (Thursday’s) intrasquad scrimmage.
“It was like, ‘Why haven’t we been doing this (all along in practice)?,’” he added.
Despite the forfeit win over Lexington, the Red & Black still celebrated Senior Night prior to the JV game against the Minutemen.
The team’s 19 seniors – captains Will Bolognese, Peter Alexopoulos, Eddie Sim and Dominic Vozzella, along with their classmates Christaki Kolias, Keith Galvin, Eyitayo Owolabi, Jibreel Osman, Gibson Ketterer, Owen Katz, Stephen McCabe, Jr., Andrew Haigis, Dylan Martin, Evan Berg, Michael Kohlmann, Tim Dean, Chase Lucia, Danry Njawa and Ciaran Hannon – were honored for their contributions to the program the last four years.
“They have developed [nicely] over the last three years [on the varsity] as members of those successful teams,” Dembowski said. “They [began] to see that winning takes more than just one or two players.”
Two days before Thursday’s festivities, the team practiced in two groups, prior to the intrasquad scrimmage the next day, and Dembowski saw the intensity pick up.
“This week was definitely more physical than normal practices. It helped us understand that football’s a physical game, and that matters for a young team,” said Dembowski, who admits they are relatively inexperienced this year, while adding that “we don’t have a ton of guys who had played a lot of (varsity) games.”
That physical edge has its purpose. Winchester ran into teams in last year’s playoffs that definitely relied on its physicality, and Dembowski wants to see his players play that hard-hitting, clean game when the playoffs begin again next month.
Dembowski had his players lifting on Friday, before giving them the weekend off. But come Monday, “the intensity goes up” in order to get them ready for a trip to Belmont to take on the Marauders this coming Friday night (Oct. 30) at 6 p.m.
The forfeit over Winchester is “a win on paper,” but that might not be the desired outcome, because, as Dembowski puts it, “it doesn’t help the team’s opponent value in the playoff rankings [as of Oct. 23, they are the 13th seed in Division 2].”
The veteran coach then went on to say: “I don’t have all the answers to [the power rankings], but I also don’t know if anyone understands how it all works. But we just have to roll with it,” Dembowski said. “We just need to take care of business against Belmont, while the teams that we have already played also need to win to keep its opponent value high enough to stay in the [Top 16] mix.”
But one thing is for sure, the intrasquad scrimmages aren’t going away.
“If they continue to show (intensity) in these scrimmages, it will be a part of our practice schedule,” Dembowski said.
Jackson Lewis is a junior journalism student at Boston University. This story is part of a partnership between the Winchester News and the Boston University Department of Journalism’s Newsroom program.
