Last Wednesday was a signing day for the Heritage High School football team.
No, there weren’t any current Timberwolves signing with a college program.
Instead, there were 28 eighth graders from Covington and Frontier middle schools signing a letters of commitment to come out and play for the Timberwolves next fall.
New Heritage head coach Dennis Moody pulled no punches when explaining why he held the signing ceremony.
“Frankly, we’re trying to find a way to keep our own kids,” Moody said. “That’s just the way things are these days — kids changing schools. And I get it. Kids want to win. But I feel like we’re sending the wrong message to our kids by offering them an easy way out. So what we’re saying to these kids is stay and start something new. Help build a new legacy at Heritage.”
Moody came to Heritage last year after coaching for 10 seasons in California’s San Joaquin Valley. After one season as an assistant coach, he was promoted in February to succeed Matt Gracey as head coach.
Moody said his first job as head coach was to find new ways to build the program from the ground up.
And that starts with getting incoming freshman from Covington and Frontier — Heritage’s two feeder middle schools — interested in playing football.
“We didn’t have a freshman team last year,” Moody said. “We only had 15, 16, 17 freshman in our entire program. But now, I’ve got 59 letters signed by middle school kids saying they want to play.”
Moody wasn’t sure how the signing ceremony, which mirrored the ceremonies high school seniors hold when signing national letters of intent for college programs, would be received by the kids and community.
“I think when we started some kids might have thought this was kind of cheesy,” Moody said. “Sitting down, signing a letter, getting your picture taken with your parents. But after a couple kids had their pictures taken, there was this vibe in the room. We had 15-16 of our current players there, and they were cheering for every kid who went up there. We had eight assistant coaches there, our principal, assistant principal. It was something they hadn’t seen before at Heritage. … It went better than I could have imagined.”
After pictures went out on social media, plus word of mouth, Moody was hearing from parents of other players who want a second signing day.
“I had parents say they couldn’t make it on Wednesday,” he said. ” ‘My kid had a baseball game that day’ or whatever. So we’re planning on doing another in May.”
Connecting with parents of incoming players was another huge benefit from the ceremony.
“Last year at Heritage, our booster club was made up of — God bless them — four parents,” Moody said. “So getting to know our parents early on, and making them part of the process, will help us build our program.”
Moody also pointed out to the incoming freshman that they can chase their dreams at Heritage.
Two players from the Class of 2018 – quarterback Michael Taras (Eastern Washington) and receiver Robbie Meadors (Simon Fraser) – are now part of college football programs. Another current player, junior lineman Cade Gardner, recently returned from a recruiting trip at Montana.
“That’s another piece of this that could be really cool,” Moody said. “What if in four years, we have one of these kids sitting down and signing with a college program. Then we could take their eighth-grade photo and put it next to their senior signing football. We used that as a motivating tool, and it got the kids talking.”
Moody admitted the program still has a long way to go to be a contender in a 4A Greater St. Helens League that has crowned two state champions in the past three seasons.
But events like the one last Wednesday can provide a start.
“We’ve got a great school at Heritage, and the kids are phenomenal,” he said. “It’s a lot like the school I coached at in California – blue-collar, hard-working mix of kids. And we’re trying to bring them all together as one family.
“As we like to say at Heritage, the H stands for home.”
Tim Martinez is the assistant sports editor/prep editor for The Columbian. He can be reached at (360) 735-4538, tim.martinez@columbian.com. His Twitter handle is @360TMart.
