EASTHAMPTON — The Williston Northampton football team is ready to return to its successful ways following a third straight sub-.500 season.
The Wildcats went 3-5 in 2018, a mark that mirrored their 2017 season and was only a two-game improvement from 2016, coach Tom Beaton’s first with the program. The group has struggled to find its footing since its jump to the New England Preperatory School Athletic Council Class A Division.
Beaton has let it be known that he wanted to build the program from the bottom and he feels as if the team is coming along just as he expected.
“The big thing when I took over, I was very clear with the athletics staff at Williston, the deans, all that, ‘I want to build it the right way,’” Beaton said. “It’s not who I am to go get all of these (post graduates) to try and turn the program around. I want to build it with those young guys so that you have a consistent culture for years to come. I think this senior class is the most talented we’ve had since I’ve been here but also I think they’ve done the best job with the culture of the team.”
Coming off a season where they had so many new faces entering the fray and lack of experience across the board, the Wildcats are returning many of their starters and have a core group on offense and defense that have a season of playing with each other.
“I think the thing that we’re pretty blessed with is that we have so many returning starters,” Beaton said. “We started four freshmen last year and I think that’s probably more than the rest of the league combined. We have a great, a really strong senior class that has been a really core group for us.”
The offense comes with some firepower. Senior quarterback Henri Bourque has spent a season and a half as the starter and looks to drive an offense that held its own last season.
The spread offense that the Wildcats run is enhanced by senior running back Cal Messina, who was named a captain after just his first season with the program.
“We’ve been able to install things a lot faster this year,” Beaton said. “With us having so many guys returning, our goals have gotten a lot higher as well. Offensively last year our goal was to score four touchdowns every game. We did that six out of eight games last year. Now our goal is to get five touchdowns a game.”
With a school that has students from all over the world, it was difficult for the football program to have a lot of their players working together during the offseason. Because of that, a lot of their preparation for the season had to come within a few short weeks before the season started.
“(Coach) sets us up in the offseason to hit the ground running when we come in,” Messina said. “We have a really short preseason. We came here August 30th and so we’re coming right into games in only a couple of weeks. We scrimmaged a week after our first practice so it’s crucial to hit the ground running here and have a really good offseason.”
Playing in the Class A Erickson League also doesn’t help Williston’s lack of a preseason. It’s a difficult league so it will be facing a tough opponent each week, starting with the Kent School (1-0), Saturday at 6:30 p.m. in Easthampton.
“There’s no weeks where ‘oh, this is a gimme’ or a rollover win,” Messina said. “There’s none of that in this league. Every week you gotta come ready to play 100 percent because one mistake or bad play could ruin the whole game.”