From the ground up: Trinity Collegiate starts football program

DARLINGTON -- Seiya Miyata doesn’t remember everything about the first time he tried to make a tackle in football practice just a couple of weeks ago.

But he does remember one thing.

“It was not very good,” he said, smiling.

That might be expected, though, from an 11th-grader of Japanese descent who lived in Brazil for 10 years and had not even heard of American football before coming here.

As a starting cornerback on Trinity Collegiate School’s first football team, learning the game has not come easily for Miyata. He said he’s still adjusting to the shape of the ball.

“It was always round for me in other sports,” he said.

Miyata is the extreme example of what Titans coach Fred Avent and his assistants are going through trying to put together a football program from scratch.

But although the other members of the team know what football is, only a couple of them have played the game.

The only player with any high school experience is quarterback Oliver Hubbard, a junior who played previously at St. Andrew’s School in Savannah, Ga.

Trinity, a member of the South Carolina Independent School Association, will field an eight-man varsity team this season.

Avent is “cautiously optimistic” about what he will see when the Titans open at state runner-up Andrew Jackson Academy a week from now.

“We’ve got a really good group of athletes,” Avent said. “We’ve got some kids who like to hit, we’ve got some speed and we’ve got some excellent size.

“It’s whether we can put all those components together and turn it into a football team.”

Growing pains

It doesn’t help when two of the better athletes on the team are sidelined with ankle injuries and are lost for at least the first two games.

But seniors Gray Snowden and Jack Hoover, who each double as running backs and linebackers, will be on the sideline next Friday cheering on their teammates.

“It’s hard not being able to play,” Hoover said. “But you just gotta go out and try to help everybody get pumped up, keep them working hard and keep them motivated.”

Although Avent would rather have everyone healthy, he’s probably glad for the motivational help.

He’s got his hands full just teaching the basic fundamentals of the game.

Avent didn’t attempt to install any offense or defense during a 10-day spring practice period, and even held off a couple of more days once practice began Aug. 3. It was all about teaching different types of blocking and proper tackling techniques.

Then came the task of getting players to know how to line up the right way.

So when the Titans had their first — and only, Avent said — scrimmage of the year against The Byrnes School last week, there were lots of nerves among his players and it showed up sometimes.

Avent didn’t always see great execution — he pointed out players a couple of times backing up or just waiting for the opponent to come to them before trying to make a block or tackle — but he did see progress.

“Overall, I was pleased,” he said. “... It was great for us. I don’t know how much good it did Byrnes.”

Maybe Avent’s most trying task , he said, is simply to get his players to develop the football mentality and think like football players.

He told a story of a particular play during the scrimmage with Byrnes.

“Byrnes stepped a linebacker up into the ‘A’ gap and our guard was supposed to pull on that particular play,” Avent said. “It didn’t even cross his mind that ‘this guy in front of me is most dangerous, so I’ve got to take him on first.’”

Of course, the linebacker shot the gap and tackled the quarterback before the play ever had a chance to develop.

“I was like, ‘What’s going on?’” Avent said. “And the guard said, ‘I’m supposed to pull.’ And he was right. It’s just one of those things where we’re trying to teach them football. We’ve got some very, very intelligent kids. But they don’t always think like football players. But they’re getting there.”

Up and running

Before a player ever steps foot onto a field to practice, there are plenty of other preparations that have to take place.

The school has to purchase weights for the weight room, footballs, helmets, pads and any other equipment that is needed.

According to a press release from Trinity Collegiate, it took approximately $20,000 in start-up costs just to get the program going. The money was funded by parent donations and the school’s athletic booster club.

“We had no weight equipment, we had no footballs, we had absolutely no football equipment whatsoever,” Avent said.

Wilson Hall in Sumter even donated some weight equipment, Avent said.

Down the road, of course, will come expenses that dwarf the $20,000 — the stadium, lights, goal posts, seating and accompanying buildings like the field house and concession stands.

For now, Trinity will play its home games for the first two seasons at Freedom Florence.

Head of School Em Hubbard said he hopes profits from those two seasons plus more donations will allow the Titans to have their own field on the 100-acre campus.

Hubbard said he knows how costly establishing a football program can be, since he helped begin the one at St. Andrew’s when he was the school’s athletic director.

“It is not an inexpensive sport,” he said.

Into the fire

Avent doesn’t know exactly what he’ll see when the Titans play next Friday.

He’s fairly confident, though, that his team won’t back down from any challenge.

“From the first practice when I was concerned if we were going to make it as a football team to where we are now, you can definitely see the difference in the way we come up and hit people, the way we block, the way we keep our feet driving, it’s like a totally different team,” Avent said.

Avent knows to expect smooth sailing, though, would be dreaming.

“I’m not saying we have to go out and win seven games,” he said. “But can we be successful enough to keep the excitement going?”

But that’s life for a new team that likely will be an underdog all season.

“I know the mindset of other teams is going to be that we’ll be a pushover,” Oliver Hubbard said. “But I don’t think we will be. I think we’ll give them a really hard time.”