Trinity Prep eyes playoffs after postseason ban appeal

Postseason football is back at Trinity Preparatory School — thanks to a successful appeal of a three-year postseason ban. Now that the varsity football squad once again has a shot at the playoffs next season, the Saints are ready to make a run.

The ban can be traced back to a series of injuries the team suffered at the start of the year, Athletic Director and Defensive Coordinator David Langdon said.

Trinity Prep had hopes to build off a successful 2017 season that ended with a record of 7-2. 

“We came into the season after having a successful season the year before thinking we had a chance to be pretty good,” Langdon said. “We thought we had a chance to make a little run in the playoffs. Unfortunately with a school this size, when you have injuries that can really hurt you. In my 31 years as a coach on the sideline, I don’t know if I’ve had a crazier year of injuries.”

With a home game against Frostproof Middle-Senior High School approaching Sept. 7, 2018, the Saints realized they were missing 16 players because of injury and sickness.

Trinity Prep was left with several of its smaller, younger players — and a decision had to be made about safety, Langdon said.

“We got a situation where we were playing some very young kids, and we were about to play a very mature team,” Langdon said. “We feel that football is a very, very safe game, but at the same time, there’s a physical maturity level difference between some kids. We would have been forced to put in some younger kids that we may not have put in that type of competition, so we felt it was best that we didn’t play the game.

“We said, ‘There’s no way. We’re not going to put our kids in this situation,’” he said. “You got a kid who’s played one year and weighs 137 pounds, and you’re going to put him up against a 280 kid? No.”

The Trinity Prep coaching staff knew the consequences they would face for not playing the game. After a technical forfeit, the school was slapped with a three-year postseason ban by the FHSAA Sept. 13.

“We knew there was a rule that said there was a chance of us being suspended, but we felt like we had a great argument for appeal,” Langdon said. “Even if they said we wouldn’t have won the appeal, I still felt like that was the right decision to make. This was a decision by a group of experts. … Our upper administration agreed, and so we went on with it.”

The school filed its appeal 10 days after the ban and made its case before a panel Oct. 24.

“A lot of times, it doesn’t go well for people who go through appeals with FHSAA,” Langdon said. “With a unanimous vote, we won our appeals, and we are eligible for playoffs without penalty after this year.”

The official ruling lifted the postseason ban for the 2019/2020 season and the 2020/2021 season. The ban on this year’s football season was upheld, but the team already had been mathematically eliminated from the postseason at the time of the appeal hearing, Langdon said.

A SHOT AT SCHOOL HISTORY

The Saints are excited to have that appeal process behind them and a new season on the horizon. They hope to bounce back from this season’s 2-8 record.

“I think a lot of us — the younger players — had to step up more than we usually play, because we didn’t have a lot of seniors to begin with,” junior Austin Ohlwiler said. “We got a year of experience even though we didn’t get to go to the playoffs last year. We’re kind of more mature than we were last year.”

“We need to get better in everything every day,” Langdon said. “A lot of the times, we’re speed challenged compared to people we play — that means we have to do a lot of other things differently.”

Offense still has been a great strength of the Saints in recent years because of head coach and offensive coordinator Mike Kruczek, formerly the head coach for the University of Central Florida and the former offensive coordinator for the Arizona Cardinals. The Trinity Prep coach also won two Super Bowls as a player with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1978 and 1979.

The players’ ability to adapt has been the key as well, Langdon said.

“Our kids being as bright as they are allow us to do some things that we do — even they don’t realize how much they do it sometimes,” he said.

Langdon said one of the biggest goals for the team going into next season will be finding its next quarterback. The team also faces a major challenge as a small private school: participation. The roster for next year as of December would have 24 players.

“We feel like we have a good nucleus — our issue is coming with problems that a lot of other smaller schools have,” he said. “We’re trying to be creative with other schools on how to keep kids involved. For example, rightfully so, there’s a lot of (families) that don’t want their kids going into a middle-school football program in eighth grade, going into ninth grade and playing against kids that are up to four years older than them. … We’re working with other schools in the Greater Orlando area that maybe have a sixth-grade flag football team going into a middle-school-type league, where you have eighth- and ninth-graders playing together and then you have the high school.”

The Saints are craving a chance to turn the program around and make history. Trinity Prep finished as the state runner-up in 1971 and 1977 but hasn’t won a district championship since.

“It was a relief to get the ban taken away, because now we can go into next season looking forward to playing in the playoffs, where if we didn’t have it we might not go as hard,” junior Max Holler said. “It would be really cool to make your mark on the school’s history and have your own banner up there, so every time you come back when you’re an alumni, you get to see your year up there. ‘I was a part of that. We made that history with the school.’”