The Bison football team lost 32 straight games over the last three years.
That ended on Oct. 24 with their revitalizing 41-0 win over the Vanlue Wildcats, who were 1-9 this season.
The senior night game started off with a bang, as sophomore Essien Williams took the opening kickoff to the house. From then on Vanlue could not stop the Bison herd, as Beachwood poured on the touchdowns.
Athletic Director Ryan Peters described the emotional moment after the Bison win.
“Coach Gonell got a gatorade bath by two freshmen,” said Peters. “The kids went and hugged the other team, shook hands, and the entire student body section — band, drill team, cheerleaders and football team, locked arm and arm, played the alma mater followed by the fight song… It was a beautiful community moment.”
“Our student body could have bailed on this football team, but they showed up and the student section was packed,” he said.
Junior Captain Maverick Edwards, who plays running back and outside linebacker, described the process of preparing for this game.
“I believe that the focus throughout [the week before the game] was 100%,” Edwards said. “I feel like we all knew what we wanted. We knew that number one, it was a very winnable game, but [also] that we couldn’t underestimate Vanlue at all.”
Edwards reports that the Bison made slow but steady growth throughout the season.
“Starting in week one, we weren’t all cohesive, and we weren’t together, there wasn’t a lot of unity,” he said. “But I think by week ten and week nine, we played together and it showed on Friday night during week ten [against Vanlue].”
“That’s good momentum going into next season,” he added.
Edwards described how the team stayed motivated through this season.
“What kept the team motivated was that we knew that there was a goal at the end,” he said. “That goal was to not only win a game this season, but to get good momentum going into next season.”
He is setting ambitious goals for the upcoming year.
“Our plan for next season is to be in the playoffs, to be playing November football. And that’s always been the goal,” he said.
He also understands what it will take to meet those expectations.
“As a captain, I [am] one of the leaders on the team. My plan [this offseason] is to ensure that every freshman, every sophomore, every junior and every senior too is showing up to workouts,” he said. “We have to have a fantastic offseason. It can’t be inconsistent.”
The Drought
While this win is a huge boost to the team, the losing streak cannot be glossed over.
For context, the record NFL losing streak since the inception of the Super Bowl era is 26 games by the then brand-new expansion team the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the longest losing streak in FBS college football history is 34 games by the Northwestern Wildcats.
The Bison were outscored 1310-207 over their streak, 93-6 in two games versus their rival Orange High School and have not had a winning season since the shortened 2020 season.
Beachwood football has had a poor reputation for some years now. Bison alum Mar’tez Pinkney explained what it felt to be on the team during the drought.
“I guess my sophomore year I realized we weren’t going to be too good,” Pinkney said. “Going into my senior year for some reason I still thought we were going to be good, but after our first game I kind of knew it wasn’t going to be good, and then after I graduated I knew it wasn’t going to get any better.”
Pinkney, class of 2024, played football for all four years at BHS as outside-linebacker and running back. He felt that during his years on the team, the program was more focused on surviving than thriving; the coaches had to prioritize keeping the team together over improving.
“Personally, in the future I think Beachwood football will build back up with the youth [programs], but now in these next few years it’s more about keeping the program alive than winning games,” he told the Beachcomber in September.
Pinkney felt that players did not take the game seriously during his upperclassmen seasons.
“You could tell the team was trying to win during my freshman and sophomore years, but by the time I got to my junior and senior years that all died,” he said. “My last two years I don’t think there was a culture at all.”
“There wasn’t anybody who cared to win, I don’t think…anyone [who] cared to do anything special in football,” he added. “[We were] just out there for fun I guess.”
The Turnaround
It has been a tremendous challenge for the team’s leadership to turn attitudes like these around. Peters was optimistic that he would see some growth this season. He hired Head Coach Jonathan Gonell, a coach who has won three National Championship rings for Mount Union (two as a player, one as coach) and saw an immediate change in attitude.
“I’m very excited about coach Gonell and his staff… they have put a tremendous amount of time in the offseason,” Peters told the Beachcomber in September. “They were here almost every day, working really hard. Our team came together this offseason, I think, and if you watch the spring and the summer it was very impressive to see how many kids were showing up.”
Peters was very optimistic about the future of the team, referencing improved participant numbers within the middle school and youth programs, an improvement in team discipline across the board and a new-found hunger to win.
“We’ve got a very nice middle school program, middle school numbers are up, our youth program is doing very well,” Peters said. “The current group of sophomores and juniors were our first kids that were part of our youth program, and we’re starting to reap the benefits relatively soon.”
“One of the things we were lacking was discipline,” he said. “There was a missing piece that we desperately were needing, and that was the consistency and discipline of our athletes and holding people accountable, and I think that’s where we are right now.”
“We’re in a much better place with regards to accountability and making sure that if you miss, there are consequences for missing, so I think we’ve made progress there,” he added.
Peters was very impressed with how the team responded to their challenging loss to John Adams on Aug. 29.
“ [The next morning] I was in the weight room at 8:15, I was getting a workout in, and every single football player was in that weightroom…,” he said. “They were going through film study, and that’s the thing that I don’t think we had in the previous years.”
Peters feels that the positive momentum has already shown results, as players were doing more this season such as during and after lifts and studying film at home.
Peters spoke very highly of Gonell and the culture he has brought to the program. He has been impressed by the rapid improvement of a very young team.
Gonell explained his definition of success for a rebuilding program and how he addresses the mindsets of players on a struggling team.
“We’re young, but guys have gotten a lot stronger in the weight room; the guys that have been consistent see the progress and they’d be the first to tell you,” Gonell said. “We’re getting better every day with fundamentals, with effort, tackling, blocking and just getting tougher.”
“I [want to emphasize the importance of] doing it the right way so that guys understand the concept of hard work and being a team… I just want to see guys trusting each other, building a work ethic, learning life lessons about being on time, being respectful and learning how to communicate with each other,” he said. “That’s what I define success as.”
“That’s an every day thing,” he added. “I don’t think it’s just on a Friday night, it’s every day reminding guys we gotta get better.”
“You’ve got to focus on our team, yourself and how am I going to get one percent better,” he added. “… I tell guys ‘We’re getting better, we got to trust that we’re getting better, and you will see the results; it may not come when you want it, but you will see results.’”
Sophomore Essien Williams, running back and inside linebacker for the Bison, spoke highly of the behind-the-scenes development of the team this season.
“I would say our focus is on development; getting better day in and day out,” he said. “We are a young team, and a lot of people don’t see that.”
To say the team is young is an understatement. On a team with 24 players, half are freshmen. Williams then explained how the team has a higher ceiling of performance to reach, and that the key to improvement is going to be consistency.
“We can perform better as a team, because when we go into games I feel like we don’t play to our full potential,” Williams said. “We have actually been doing better in practice and in games; a lot better than at the beginning of the season, so I would say it’s starting to click.”
“If [all the players and coaches] stay, we keep a steady system with players coming in from middle school, no one’s quitting after we lose or after the season, and most of the players [commit] to our program, we will become a well-respected program,” he added.
While the win heading into the offseason is a step in the right direction, the work has just begun for this program.
