Legacy seniors reflect on starting program from scratch

OCOEE — There were times, during his pursuit of starting a football program at Legacy Charter, that Athletic Director Jarrett Wiggers wavered in his decision.

As the coach for the Eagles’ football program for all three years of its existence, along with lead assistant Mike Yoakum, Wiggers admits now that there were points where the project was in danger of a fizzling out. 

Fortunately, there was a group of boys at the school who wouldn’t drop it. 

That was roughly four years ago, and some of those boys — players such as Dillan Hudson and Colton Liddell — are seniors, who will be playing their second-to-last games as high school football players Oct. 31, when the Eagles (5-3) travel to take on Southwest Florida Christian (4-3).

“The more that I heard from the boys, we had a couple kids that are coming up through Pop Warner systems and stuff like that, and they’re just dying for this,” Wiggers said. “Some of (the seniors now), that was that core group of boys that were always in my office saying, ‘Hey, what about football?’ To look at them and let them know, ‘It’s just going to be too difficult’ — that was not a viable answer for them.”

So, the charter school nestled right along the border of Ocoee and Winter Garden started a program and took to the practice field in the spring of 2012 for the first time. For Liddell, the quarterback for the Eagles since he was a sophomore, it was just in the nick of time.

“I had many talks with my parents about transferring over to West Orange or Ocoee just to go play football,” Liddell, who played both Pop Warner Football and in the Central Florida Youth Football League, said. “When Mr. Wiggers announced we were going to have a football program, that was a big moment for me. I wanted to stay there, because I’d been there all my life.”

GETTING OFF THE GROUND

Liddell’s excitement was shared and, in the spring of 2012, Legacy held a spring season but did not compete in a spring game. 

The excitement of players such as Liddell and Hudson wavered early, though, as they arrived for the first week of practice to discover more than half of their teammates had never even played football before.

“I’m not going to lie, I was a little bit discouraged at first,” Liddell said.

Things improved, though, and eventually, Hudson and Liddell were helping those teammates get up to speed — teammates such as current senior Justin Carmean.

“I’d never played football in my entire life until I came here — I just decided (to do it),” Carmean said. “It was difficult at first … (Dillan Hudson) helped me throughout the whole season.”

THE FIRST SEASON

For many of the players who were on the team when it took the field for the first time in the fall of 2012 — a road game against Life Academy in Kissimmee — they remember every second of it.

For Hudson, the leader of the Eagles’ defense this fall, there was a heightened air of uncertainty, he recalled, as they readied to hit someone besides themselves for the first time.

“We didn’t know anything about the team … our coaches, they didn’t know what to expect, and neither did the players,” Hudson said. “Everyone was kind of nervous, and then, after we scored our first touchdown, it was kind of like everything went from there.”

Legacy followed up that first game, a loss, with five consecutive wins. While many of the programs were in similar situations to the Eagles — new or undermanned in their own way — there were some victories early in that first season that stuck with the eager group of athletes.

“I remember us playing a team called Bronson, and it was their Homecoming night, and we had seen them coming up and we were like, ‘Man, these guys are huge!’” senior Connor Knecht said. “We were actually down in the first half but came back and won. … I think that was where it really started off where we were like, ‘Wow, we can play with these guys.’”

That first season saw mostly road games, with destinations ranging from Kissimmee to Jacksonville to St. Augustine. The idea, as Wiggers saw it, was to keep his team competitive in its earliest days — no matter how far the drive.

“We were just road warriors, because we were trying to find teams I felt we could compete with,” Wiggers said. “Because I knew if we went out there and lost by 60 every week, it would be hard to maintain the excitement of the program.”

EVOLUTION OF A PROGRAM

The second season for Legacy was rockier, with the team finishing 3-8, but the presence of Wiggers — an optimist’s optimist — helped keep the team positive and retain enough players to feel good entering 2014.

“It seems like he always has a solution for stuff,” Hudson said of his coach. “What makes him a good coach is that everyone on the team feels like they can go to him.”

The Eagles stepped their game up in the spring of this year, with Wiggers looking to capitalize on the football smarts of some of his veteran players — especially Hudson and Liddell, who had become de facto player-coaches on the field. A program that had started running the simplest of I-Formation sets in its first two years introduced a spread attack this past spring.

“It’s phenomenal — the first year we were predominately a running team, and this year, we’re pretty much 50-50 run and pass,” Liddell said. “It just shows how much we’ve actually grown from the first year until now.”

It’s a sentiment Wiggers shares and credits to his senior class. Legacy essentially implemented the new offense in roughly eight days during the spring.

“We put in a whole new offensive scheme in the spring,” Wiggers said. “We used it against Mount Dora Bible in our spring game — and we had to play a week early.”

SENIOR SWAG

This season has marked a dramatic turnaround for the Eagles after last season’s disappointing finish.

Legacy is 5-3 heading into Friday’s game, one of two “seeded games” for Sunshine State Athletic Conference programs that did not qualify for the playoffs. Being in the same division with high-powered Orlando Christian Prep (8-0) and CFCA (7-1) kept the Eagles out of the playoffs, but what has impressed Wiggers the most about this year’s team and its senior leadership is how they have responded since being eliminated from playofff contention.

“Pretty much after losing to CFCA, the playoff picture for us was pretty much out of the question,” Wiggers said. “And (for the seniors) to still go out there and be excited for our practices, to not lose momentum, was a huge victory for us.”

This year’s six seniors — Liddell, Hudson, Carmean, Knecht, Michael Toomer and Brandon Vees — have taken pride in being part of something bigger than themselves, mainly establishing a football culture at the school.

It’s what led Toomer, a basketball player by trade, to decide to come out for his final season at Legacy after not having played before.

“Everyone left last year, and I felt like, ‘Might as well go for it, just to say I played,’” said Toomer, who, at 6-foot-3, has been a valuable addition to the team at wide receiver and free safety. “I’m really happy I made that decision.”

The final season for the program’s seniors has been full of memories, from the Eagles’ winning record to the time Vees, who has autism, ran the ball for a touchdown. Although the play was called back, the moment still left quite an impression on the young man.

“I felt like great, and after I had gone to the sideline, I thanked God for this touchdown,” Vees said.

The program will miss the seniors once they are gone, Wiggers acknowledges, especially their leadership. In the meantime, though, there are still two games to be played and momentum upon which to build. For a group of young men who have been building a program for three years, it’s a task right up their alley.

Contact Steven Ryzewski at [email protected].