Newfield prepares for season under new coach

Newfield football has been part of the growing eight-man circuit since 2018 and competed for a Section IV Championship two seasons ago. This year, the Trojans will be under the leadership of Hank Neubert, who had coached in Newfield for five years in the past and was the offensive coordinator at the varsity level for the team’s first eight-man season.

Practices began on Monday morning for the football team as it readies for the season opener on Sept. 8. Neubert discussed being on the sidelines once again for the Trojans.

“It’s great to be back in Newfield,” Neubert said. “I love the community. I love that our school is the center of our community. That’s a good feeling. The turnout [Monday] was good. We lost a lot of seniors from last year, a lot of great leadership, a lot of great kids. The kids who came out yesterday worked. We got after things. Things went very smoothly. We have a good core of leadership from our seniors, and a couple of our juniors are fantastic leaders.”

Neubert started officially in the beginning of July, and he is joined by former Ithaca High School football assistant coaches Ian Valentine and Chad Rylott. The goal for Neubert when crafting his coaching staff was to “surround myself with people that are smarter than I am.”

Most recently, Neubert was an assistant coach for Section IV champion Lansing football team in 2019 and is familiar with the new variation of football. He talked about learning the faster, more open style of the game.

“My explanation was, basically, you take away your tackles and your fullback but not really,” Neubert said. “As that year went on, we had some growing pains, but it was fun. We learned a lot. I learned a great deal going back to Lansing for a year with [head coach] Brett Hotchkiss and those guys. We had a good time. We had some success that year, but that’s when the eight-man really became smooth. Having since July 1 to prepare for this when I was offered the job, I’ve been having a little fun with it, playing around with it.”

The plan is to have a week of padded practice before facing Lansing for a preseason scrimmage Sept. 3 in order to prepare for the regular season. Having learned the game from Lansing coaching greats Ed Redmond and Stu Dean, Neubert is excited to face his former team. 

“Hopefully, we have some success against Lansing at the scrimmage and learn from it so we’re ready to go on [Sept. 8],” he said. “On that scrimmage, especially any time with coach Hotchkiss as the opposing coach, both of us will have a little bit of fun with it. Hopefully, we get out of it unscathed and uninjured and ready to go to start the season. But I’m looking forward to that.”

The Trojans had 13 seniors from last year’s team graduate, but perhaps none more meaningful than All-State quarterback Jacob Humble, ESPN Ithaca’s Night of Champion’s most recent male scholar-athlete of the year recipient. To fill his shoes, Newfield is looking at a quarterback competition between junior Jalen Hardison and sophomore Austin Jenney.

“First of all, we’d love to have Jake back out here,” Neubert said. “Without Jacob, it’s definitely going to look a little different. Jalen Hardison and Austin Jenney both are athletic, and they are different. They bring different physical attributes to it. Austin’s going to be more of a give the ball, throw short passes guy. With Jalen, there would be some similarities to Jake Humble. With Jalen playing as a wide receiver for Jake, there’s some of the stuff he saw. Austin was also on that team as a freshman last year. So, they got to learn by watching Jake Humble, which is probably a little bit better than learning from what I’m talking about.” 

Fewer than half of the players on this year’s team are seniors, so Neubert is hoping to continue to grow the program since the Trojans reached the Section IV Championship two seasons ago.

“We’re going to continue to build upon what we’ve done with eight-man,” Neubert said. “They had success the last real season we had. Last year, they were solid and they had some success and that feeling. A lot of these guys spent a lot of time on the field, and they liked that feeling of winning. We’re going to continue to build on that for the future and just keep kids involved.”

Neubert added that there used to be a competition between football and soccer during the fall season to try and get the best athletes. However, the goal for him now is to just get students off the couch and to play any sport. This year, Neubert has 20 players to work with in his first season back on the Newfield sidelines as they prepare for Sept. 8’s opener against Thomas A. Edison.