[All photos provided by www.PhotoAndGraphic.com]
SOUTH GLENS FALLS – Coach Michael Hammond and the South Glens Falls Bulldogs are off to a great start this season.
“We played Gloversville Friday, we won 35 to 20. We made some very coachable mistakes but they showed a lot of heart and effort for all 4 quarters,” Hammond said.
There are 33 players on the team this year including one sophomore from JV.
“We’re looking good, our numbers are decent, we have good athletes. They’re hard working, very coachable players,” he declared.
The Captains of the team this year are KJ Mickel, a senior running-back and line-backer, Aidan Davies, a senior wide receiver, Dylan Schramel, a junior running-back, and Zach Nolan, a senior tight-end and line-backer.
In terms of big rivalry games, Hammond said, “You know, I’m not sure with that question and the reason being is that in Class A football, every game is a big game. There’s no holes, in my opinion section 2 Class A is one of the toughest in the state and so you kind of look at every game as a big game. Especially since they switched over to one division this year so we play every Class A school except Mohonasen. So almost every game can be treated like a play-off type atmosphere because in order for us to make the play-offs this year, they only take the top 4 teams so you have to win pretty much every game as possible.”
“In all honesty, our aspirations are we want to kind of put our place in with the top national of Class A football. We’ve been kind of on the cusp in the middle of the past few seasons and we’re attempting to break the top four,” Hammond admitted.
When asked how long he had been coaching he laughed, “I don’t like to keep track of those things, it makes me feel old. I think this is my seventh year as head coach. I took a year off and stepped aside for a year in between so I’ve been coaching here in general for 11 years.”
Hammond loves to inspire his team and said, “one piece of advice that I always give the team right before a game is, ‘believe in themselves. Put all the distractions aside.’ I tell them week in and week out that the people who are on the field, the people that are at the practices, are the people who know best what’s going on. You take the good, you let it go; you take the bad, you let it go. Because we know what’s going on and we know what we’re doing.”
