Well, its time to see if words really do mean anything.

Or, put another way, it’s time to see if a community is all talk and no action...again.

You see, tonight marks the beginning of yet another new era in the history of the Tug Valley High School Football program as new head coach Bryan Duty and his staff of eager, young and optimistic assistant coaches begin their official reign as the leaders of the program at TVHS. They will hold their first player’s meeting and their first community “football boosters” meeting.

Out of the player meeting is hoped to come a team of young men ready to move TVHS’s football fortunes forward. That, hopefully won’t be hard to achieve if the parents decide to let their basketball players also play football if they so desire.

But out of the parent meeting is hoped to come a long-awaited, much needed and never quite gotten football boosters group that can lend not only financial support to the team, but also help the team secure and attain much needed improvements to their field, their dressing facilities, their weight training room and their on-field concession areas.

The creation, building and support of such a group is ESSENTIAL to the future of the Tug Valley Football program, Mingo’s only Class AA program. Without such support, the team cannot get everything it needs to be successful.

Right now, Tug Valley has young men who have stepped up to fill the coaching positions at a time when once again the team and the school were left in turmoil by the resignation of another Head Coach. Bear in mind, that would not be so unusual except for the fact that Coach Duty is the 11th head football coach the school has had in it’s twenty year existence. And that high turnover has been due largely to the fact that in terms of community support, football at TVHS has taken a second seat to basketball all these many years.

People in the community have given, with a few rare exceptions, mostly lip service to supporting, backing and actually working for and securing needed improvements for the Panther football program for years. They have talked the good fight, but when push came to shove, the support has faded as quickly as a snowflake on a hot summer day.

What makes this worse, is the fact that the community, in spite of it’s lack of support and help for the coaches and the program, have never failed to criticize when TVHS didn’t win. The helps been weak but the criticism has oftentimes been aplenty!

But tonight can change all that. Tonight, the TVHS community needs to come out at 6:30 in the school cafeteria and give a new day to this program.

The ugly truth is, if you’re not there tonight, you forfeit your right to criticize later. That’s the bottom line.

Good luck, TVHS football, from the other side of the desk.