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Stuart High football, as you know it, is dead. After a one-win season in 2005, the Raiders were already on life support, sporting a record of 5-64 since the start of the new millennium. The program fully flatlined in 2006 and 2007, when the Raiders never once experienced the thrill of victory and carted a 24-game losing streak into this offseason. After a stretch like that, the spirit summoning slogan of “wait ‘til next year” must hold the same level of encouragement as it would for a death row inmate. It was time for a change. It was time to move on. So, the defeatist attitudes, the lopsided losses, all the bad vibes that have hung on this program like Jacob Marley’s chains, they are all gone now, buried in a box under the corner of the high school’s football field. That was the not-so-subtle symbolism behind the funeral procession held by recently re-hired Stuart Head Football Coach Roy Ferri and his team last Friday. Into the coffin went the old game films, old uniforms and equipment, with nine players driving down nails to seal it shut. They sang as they carried it. Eager to exorcise the demons of three straight seasons that yielded only one lousy win, the players/pallbearers transported the coffin to the freshly dug, football-field grave and lowered it in. “Na, na, na, na. Na, na, na, na. Hey, hey, hey. Good-bye.” But now the end must serve as a beginning, and Ferri and his team have only the hard part ahead of them. Next season’s opponents won’t be as cooperative as that casket after all. There are some that would equate motivational tactics at Stuart to little more than a shallow gesture, akin, perhaps, to uttering a few words of encouragement to a snowball hurled down into the devil’s domain. Ferri doesn’t see it that way. Ferri believes that Stuart can not only compete in the National District, but eventually claim its title. He’s seen it before in fact. After an 0-10 season, and a mock funeral much like Friday’s, the Raiders won the district in 1992. Ferri wants to return the Raiders to prominence, and he won’t make excuses for failure to achieve it. The standard set of explanations for Stuart’s shortcomings center around the small, diverse and transient student body that makes it difficult to develop a program over the long term. Having been around the school for 20 years, Ferri doesn’t buy into it. He says that nothing about the school’s
May 1 - 7, 2008
make-up has changed over that time that would prohibit Stuart from winning consistently. He’s seen the school’s successes, which included a run to the state semifinals in 1989, when NFL running back Charlie Garner played for the team. He knows failure is not a required accessory of the Raider uniform. “We don’t suck because we’re Stuart, we suck because we don’t squeeze a down block,” Ferri says Tuesday in his office. “Let’s quit crying and do something about it.” Ferri says he’s confident his team can turn things around, and it’s a believable claim. Why else would he leave his assistant coaching post at Centreville and four consecutive years of winning teams? Given the program’s losing reputation, there are some that would view Ferri as a masochist. After all, you’d have to enjoy pain to take over a team who lost, on average, by 32 points each time they took the field last season. Ferri does not enjoy pain, but he does embrace it. In his garage, he stores every second-place trophy his teams have ever won, mostly from his work as a track coach. Mounted on the wall behind his desk in the Stuart football office is a collection of newspaper clippings. The most prominent of them screams, “Ferri Out As Head Coach” in a font size so large you’d instead expect it to read “Allies Land in Normandy.” “You’re damn right there’s a chip on my shoulder,” says Ferri, who was fired in 2000 after his first tenure as Stuart’s head coach. “We’ve become the district’s whipping boys. We’ve got to get that chip back as a team.” Before that though, Ferri still has to familiarize himself with it. As he schemes for future success, his current roster board is littered with nicknames for players he doesn’t know. At the moment, the task of resurrecting the football program lies on the shoulders of “Short Dude,” “Big Head” and “TGI,” a player so named for his employment at T.G.I. Friday’s. Ferri knows it won’t be a roster of all-stars, but he also knows it won’t be a roster that anticipates a loss before kickoff. There may not be a return to the top for the Raiders this season. There may not even be a winning record. But with a sad past dead and buried, come Fall, Ferri is confident that he and his team will finally be able to breathe a little life back into Stuart High football. Mike Hume may be emailed at mhume@fcnp.com.
A 5-1 rout of rival Clarke County High School highlighted another undefeated week for the George Mason High School boys varsity soccer team. After downing the Eagles on Friday, the Mustangs carried off their sixth-straight district win with a 3-0 victory over Manassas Park on Tuesday. Senior Tim Brooks scored his first goal of the season in the third minute of the match against Clarke last Friday and sophomore Andrew Arias scored the eventual match-winner 24 minutes later, as the Mustangs jumped on the Eagles from the outset. Sophomore Nick Smirniotopoulos struck again for Mason just prior to halftime and the Mustangs never looked back from there. Junior Anthony Andrianarison and senior Matt Gresko each beat the Clarke keeper in the second half to comfortably coast to the win. Senior Antonio Randrianasolo notched a pair of assists. On Tuesday night, sophomore Alex Casteuble put the Mustangs on the board around the 13-minute mark. It seemed the floodgates were destined to open shortly thereafter, but a volley by sophomore Teddy Rueckert couldn’t quite sneak under the crossbar, ricocheting tantalizingly into the air until it was finally controlled by the Cougar keeper. Manassas kept Mason to a lone goal for 20 minutes, but couldn’t consistently possess the ball. The Mustangs continued to
administer pressure and finally the Cougar back line cracked, yielding a second goal with 7:36 remaining in the half. After winning the race to a lead pass in the left side of the goal box, Smirniotopoulos snuck it under the charging goalie to provide his team with a two-goal cushion. A flourish by the Cougars in Mason’s side of the field nearly put the score at 2-1 with two minutes remaining before halftime, however the Mustangs’ senior Tim Brooks turned aside a ball that seemed bound for the back of the net, steering it aside until freshman keeper Tyler Back and the rest of the Mason defense could recover. Senior Andres Ramos accounted for the match’s final goal midway through a second
The J.E.B. Stuart boys varsity tennis team is set to cruise to the National District title this season, flaunts an unblemished record of 10-0 and features one of the top youth tennis players in the country — and head coach Matt Hills is worried. The path to the team’s current perch has been easy, a little too easy in Hill’s eyes. What Hills is focused on, more than the remaining scheduled games against Edison, Washington-Lee and the National District Tournament on May 5, is a looming potential meeting with an accomplished squad from Fairfax in the opening round of the Northern Regional Tournament. Hills fears that his team, who has grown accustomed to winning, has not grown accustomed to battling to earn
half in which the Mustangs were similarly dominant. Mason was without the services of senior Antonio Randrianasolo, who missed school on Tuesday. Iwanicki believed he would be back for Wednesday night’s game against Robinson High School. Results of that match were not available at press time. Heading into the game against the highly-regarded Robinson program, Mason’s record stood at 7-2 overall, and 6-0 in the Bull Run District. Mason remains the only unbeaten team in the district, with every other team owning at least two losses thus far. The Mustangs have not lost a game since dropping an 20 decision to AA powerhouse Potomac Falls on April 7.
them. “I’ve been scared of this all year,” Hills said. “If we face Fairfax in the first round, they will be a better team than we’ve faced all season long. It could be a 5-4 game and our doubles games are going to be important when they haven’t been all year.” The reason the Raiders’ doubles matches have been meaningless is because Stuart has crushed its competition in 2008. Over the course of the season, the Raiders have just dropped one individual match, posting a collective record of 89-1. Hills’ team has cruised due to a combination of a weak field of district competition and an influx of epic talent. The Raiders have warmly welcomed transfers sophomore Abdul Al-Hogbani, currently third on Continued on Page 25