Tracy Press

 
Falcons get ready for first football season

The Falcons’ Romeo Molina tries to gain some yardage as he runs away from defender Pedro DeRobles during the new team’s practice Wednesday afternoon. Glenn Moore/Tracy Press

The athletes who have run football drills and plays on the Millennium High fields the past few weeks are the latest group to set a precedent for their school.

Come fall, they will take the field as the Falcons’ first football team.

Jayson Dias, the school’s athletic director and head coach for the football team, said he gets about two-dozen players each day at practices, from freshmen to seniors. Most have already contributed to the school’s basketball and baseball teams, and Dias said that when he announced practices for the football team, the school’s athletes were interested right away.

“The kids are excited. They’ve waited a long time to see this happen,” he said.

So far, everyone who has showed up for practice is on the team, but coaches have yet to establish an official roster or determine who is best to fill each position.

Millennium’s Kellen Cheadle works on snapping skills. Glenn Moore/Tracy Press

The school has had an athletic program for three years now. The football team is brand new and will represent Millennium in league play during its first season.

“It’s exciting, because we had to wait for so long to get our other sports going in league,” Dias said. “We were just playing to play.”

The 2007-08 school year was the first time Millennium’s girls volleyball, basketball and softball and boys basketball and baseball teams played in the Harvest Christian League. The school sent all three of its girls teams to the playoffs. That’s what the football team is aiming for, and Dias knows it’s a big goal.

“Our league was pretty competitive in football,” he said.

Millennium slipped into the league in its first year because the Falcons replace Calvary Temple’s team, which placed first in the HCL last year but won’t field players this year.

Millennium will play in a combined league, with Stone Ridge Christian and Sierra Ridge/Rite of Passage from the Mountain Valley League included along with Elliot Christian, Brookside Christian and Big Valley Christian from the HCL.

Home games will be played at Steve Lopez Stadium at West High, starting at 7 p.m. Saturday nights, and the team will continue to have its workouts on the Millennium fields.

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