RUMFORD – Free meals. Handshakes and thank yous from complete strangers. A DVD chronicling their achievement. A championship banner flying high and proud over their home field.
The Mountain Valley Falcons have been living the life of champions for the past nine months and change. That’s no small thing in a blue collar, football-crazed area that was starving for its gold football.
But now comes the hard part.
“It’s kind of a bull’s-eye on our backs,” said head coach Jim Aylward.
Indeed, the Falcons are champions for the first time, but they’re marked men for the first time, too. And not just by the opposition.
“We’ve got more of a load on our shoulders,” senior running back Aaron Arsenault said. “There are high expectations. It’s a whole new season. Last year doesn’t mean anything.”
“It’s a brand new season. We’re a brand new team,” senior fullback/linebacker Travis Fergola said. “We’ve got the same outlook where we just ready to go out there and play every single game a game at a time and see how it goes from there.”
The Falcons lost nine starters from last year’s team, including quarterback Zach Fergola and all-state defenders Korey Staires and Pat Knapp. But football coaches like to build from the middle out, so Mountain Valley is starting with a strong foundation.
“We’re solid up the middle,” Aylward said. “We just don’t have a lot of experienced skill players.”
“We lost one senior on our offensive line, so it’s going to be pretty good, except for the fact that Fergola went to fullback,” senior center David Smith said.
Fergola, a 6-foot-2 all-state linebacker and guard last year, will be blocking for the 5-foot-5 Arsenault, the only holdover in the backfield.
“When he’s down in a three-point stance, he’s as tall as me when I’m in a two-point,” Arsenault said.
Andy Shorey, a 6-foot-4 junior, takes over at quarterback for Zach Fergola. Shorey saw a lot of playing time as a backup last year because the Falcons blew out a lot of the competition.
“He doesn’t have much experience throwing the ball because we couldn’t throw,” Aylward said. “He’s a good athlete. He throws well and he doesn’t get rattled. He’s competitive, just unproven.”
The defense will try to prove it’s a worthy successor to last year’s unit, which allowed just over seven points per game. This year’s group is, like the offense, stout up the middle with Fergola, Brendan Bradley and Kyle Dow. The key will be developing an inexperienced secondary.
Perhaps the toughest task for the 2005 Falcons will be matching the chemistry of last year’s team. Ten tight-knit seniors led the team through some difficult times and led the Falcons to 11 straight wins.
“Last year, we had a lot of leadership,” said Bradley, a senior guard and linebacker. “Every one of the seniors was just amazing in terms of leadership. It’s going to be hard to replace them, but we’re going to try our best.”
They’re going to try it without their biggest nemesis from recent years, Gorham, which moves up to Class A this year.
On the surface, that would seem to make the Falcons’ road back to another title easier, along with the addition of two still developing programs, Gray-New Gloucester and Greely, to Western B.
“We’re not going to look past them, either,” Fergola said.
“We’ve still got Wells and York. They’re going to be a big test this year,” Smith said.
Wells will test them on opening night this coming Friday at Hosmer Field. The Falcons also get to host York on Oct. 7.
They’ll still be the toast of the town. By then, they may even be in every home in the Rumford area, loaded into every DVD player.
“We’re going double-platinum,” Arsenault joked.
The Falcons would just as soon go double gold.
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