Ranger pride: Cassopolis celebrates seniors after canceling football season

Published 1:17 pm Saturday, October 12, 2024

By Max Harden

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CASSOPOLIS — The William F. Scott Field stands were packed full of proud parents, family members and community members celebrating and recognizing the Cassopolis senior football players, band members and cheerleaders on a Senior Night unlike any before it.

One by one, senior cheerleaders, band members and football players were took the field with their parents to be introduced the crowd, which responded with applause. The band also took the field to perform its 2024 fall program. Unlike most Senior Nights, there were no opposing players or fans on the away side of the field and the football players were not wearing pads. Less than 24 hours earlier, Cassopolis Public Schools made the difficult decision to cancel the high school football team’s remaining two games on the schedule due to a lack of healthy, varsity-ready players. 

“It was heartbreaking but it was a smart call from the coaches and athletic director and also the principal,” Higgins said. “There should be no hate or anything like that at all. It was a smart call – we’re a small team and when you go to a small school, it happens. You don’t have the players to compete with the big kids, it happens. Life goes on and I promise that Cass will get back to doing what Cass does in football soon enough.”

Despite the canceled season, the district wanted to celebrate the seniors who have given so much to the community these past four years.

“We’re a small community,” said High School Principal and Athletic Director Lindsay Gorham-Pflug. “A lot of the coaching staff and myself are alumni, everybody’s family. We take great pride in ‘once a Ranger, always a Ranger’ and these are our kids, too. We couldn’t ask for a better response to celebrate them and let them know that we do care about them.”

“It really means a lot that everyone came out,” Higgins said. “There’s no game and there’s still people out here taking their Friday nights to come out here and support us. Not many towns would come together like Cass does.”

According to head football coach Jeremiah Lee, the Rangers began the season with 11 juniors and seniors and 26 freshman and sophomores. Following their Oct. 4 game against Decatur, seven of the Rangers’ juniors and seniors – all of whom starters – were out with injuries and with 10 players out in total. With so many injuries to older players, the team did not have enough healthy players to continue supporting both a JV and Varsity team this season.

“It was a tough decision especially on a senior night like this. You don’t want to make it but you have to put everything into perspective and it doesn’t make sense for me to put them out there,” Lee said. “We haven’t had (a JV program) in five years. We fielded a JV team this year because our program was freshman-heavy and I felt like they needed reps, and then I was dependent on some of those guys on Friday nights to fill some of those voids. The voids were becoming too much on Fridays with not having my upperclassmen. I can’t ask any more of these freshmen to do that anymore. That’s part of why we’re thin – because we’re running two programs – but I think that’s a necessity for me to be successful.”

According to Gorham-Pflug and Lee, the response to the season’s cancellation has been a mix of understanding and disappointment.

“There’s been a lot of backlash,” Gorham-Pflug said. “‘You’re teaching the kids to be quitters’ and that is not the case at all.”

“I think a lot of that is they don’t understand the situation,” Lee said. “There’s misinformation out there. We didn’t quit but it’s for the well-being of my players. When you’ve got seven out that are upperclassmen and 14 year-olds playing 18 year-olds is just too big a gap for me personally. I put their safety above my pride.”

Friday’s senior night was bittersweet for Teresa Wellman. A teacher at Cassopolis, Wellman’s son Jered is a senior on the team. While she is disappointed that Jered will not have a complete season as a senior, Wellman believes the district made the best decision for the safety of the student athletes.

“We’ve been talking for a couple weeks – a kid would get hurt and being a teacher too, they’re also my kids at school too,” she said. “I thought it was the best decision for the situation that we had because I knew our upperclassmen numbers weren’t the best and they just kind of kept dwindling and these kids were giving their heart and soul out on that field. It’s bittersweet – that’s the only sport he plays so it’s not like I’m gonna see him out on the field again but I also know that there’s a big future ahead so that’s exciting, too.”

While Senior Night did not play out as originally hoped, those involved were happy to see the community turn out in support of the seniors.

“(When the season was canceled) I wanted to just fall over in my room and cry,” said senior cheerleader Caitlin Jones. “Coming here today I just feel so much better that there was a good amount of people out tonight.”

“When I walked out and I saw the amount of people that were in stands that I knew weren’t just senior parents that were walking, I was like this is what community is about,” Wellman said. “This is what Cassopolis is, we support each other no matter what.”

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