NBC26 — By the time the Pirates take the field for their first spring football game on March 26, 490 days will have passed since their last game: the D1 state championship at Camp Randall.
"I think as a person, as a human, you don’t realize how much love you have for something, for an activity until it’s taken away from you like that," Head Coach Gary Westerman said at practice on Monday.
With an entire pandemic having enveloped the world as we know it since then, Bay Port opted out of the fall football season to join the Fox Valley Classic Conference along with 19 other area teams to form a competitive spring football structure.
"It’s going to be different," Westerman said. "It’s March, but it’s still Friday night football, and the time of the year really doesn’t matter. We’re getting an opportunity to play."
As excited as everyone involved is to play football at all this year before yet another class of student-athletes graduate, playing in the spring adds a little more to some players plates. Defensive lineman Logan Van Laanen is also a catcher for the baseball team.
"As a two-sport athlete, I’ll be doing both at the same time," senior Van Laanen said. "Mandatory football, and then after football is done, I’ll go to baseball and work hard there too. So I’m ready for both seasons. Football is priority right now and I’m ready to go.
The FVCC will run a five-week regular season that wraps up on April 23, just before Bay Port baseball opens the season on the following Tuesday, April 27.
"Two to four weeks of football overlap," Van Laanen. "So Westie — Coach Westerman works great with Coach Knutson and they figure it out, so I’m excited to play football and baseball this year."
