Pop Warner Fuels Future of Football

About 10 years ago, Grafton residents Dan Crowley, Mike Boyle and a few others decided that the town of Grafton was missing something: youth football.

Now in 2011, the Grafton Chiefs Pop Warner football league, in association with Central Massachusetts Pop Warner, is entering its ninth season of play, which got underway just a few weeks ago.

“A lot of guys have put a lot of hard work, blood, sweat and tears into the program to get it to where it is today,” said current president and eight-year member of the board Rob Giese.

Back when the league was just a thought, Crowley, Boyle and others raised money by asking for donations and doing fundraising at Gillette Stadium over a two-year period in hopes of getting enough money to form a youth football league in Grafton.

Now, Grafton is averaging about six football teams a year (one or two in each age bracket depending on numbers) and has really hit its stride over the last few years.

“Over the last three or four years I think we have three Super Bowl trophies and have qualified for regional play in the state tournament,” said Giese. “We’re definitely up and coming and hopefully we’ll keep on coming.”

The Grafton Chiefs Pop Warner League is broken down into six different age groups starting at age five to age 12. The child's age, and sometimes the weight for his age, factors into what division and team the child will be on that year.

Ages 5-6 participate in the Tiny Mites program, which is currently just a 7-on-7 flag football league; ages 7-8 form the Mighty Mites division, 9-11 is the Junior PeeWee division, where some 11-year-olds can play due to their weight if they don’t want to play just regular PeeWee, which is just 10 and 11-year-olds.

After that age bracket is the Junior Midgets and Midgets, which range in age from 12 to 14 and depend more heavily on weight classes.

In each division there is at least one team, except for the Junior PeeWee division, which has two teams, from Grafton, with anywhere from 18-22 kids on each team.

The Grafton Chiefs Pop Warner also offers cheerleading, which usually has its own squad for each division, but this year just has squads at the Tiny Mite, Junior PeeWee and PeeWee levels.

Each team plays an eight-game schedule, usually against just Central Massachusetts teams such as Auburn, West Boylston and Tantasqua, but the teams will travel as far north as Athol and sometimes to Rhode Island and New Hampshire to take on certain opponents. After that, if the team qualifies for their division, there is regional and state play.

There has always been pros and cons over the years due to having kids start playing football at a young age, especially due to the injuries, which Giese admits has hurt the numbers in the Tiny Mites program over the years.

But he honestly believes that the youth program has done more for the kids than some people seem to realize. “My son was an original Mighty Mite and he’s since now a sophomore up at playing football,” he said. “I’ve coached baseball, soccer and now football for the last eight years and I will tell you that no team brings kids together at any age better than football. It dictates that kind of camaraderie and what it takes to be a real team. It’s not baseball, where sometimes it’s the individual where this kid just hit a homerun, it is this kid isn’t going to score a touchdown if the line doesn’t block for him; it’s really an [emphasis] on team.”

Giese currently has first year Junior PeeWees that have been playing football for five years and they’re just 9 years old. “It just tells you the amount of time that it takes, but also the amount of experience these kids get and hopefully they go on to play high school ball, and by then, they’ve been playing football for eight years,” said Giese.

One of the other benefits the Pop Warner Program in Grafton has going for it is that it works closely with High School head coach Mike Ross and defensive coordinator Chris McMahon. “We basically run their defense and their offense at our Peewee, Junior Midget and Midget teams, so that when they get into high school, they know Mike Ross’s playbook back and forth,” said Giese.

Some of the current high school superstars for Ross got their football start playing on Sunday mornings with Grafton Pop Warner. “The kids and names that you hear, the Cody Munozes of the world, the Mikey and Matt Schenas, the Obi Melifonwus and Austin Carangelos, those are all Pop Warner kids,” said Giese. “Those kids have already participated for eight years [come high school], they are so far ahead of the non-athletes that are going to walk in and play high school ball and have never played the game before.”

Over the years the Grafton Chiefs Pop Warner has received a lot of support and Giese would like to thank the following individuals: Dan Crowley, Mike Boyle, Grafton High School head coach Mike Ross, Chris McMahon, Bill Johnston (only original member of the Chief’s board left), Grafton High School principal Jim Pignataro and athletic director Karrah Ellis.

For more information check out Grafton Pop Warner’s website: http://www.eteamz.com/gpwchiefs/