HUGH CONRAD
sports@tribdem.com
LORETTO —
Chris Villarrial faces some difficult tasks as he takes over a St. Francis football program that has won just
11 games in the past five years combined.
One of his first will be to try to develop more mental toughness in his players.
The former NFL player is attempting to instill that component in a team that has lost too many games in the fourth quarter in recent years.
Speaking at the football media day in the John F. Kennedy Center on Tuesday, Villarrial admitted that teaching toughness is a challenge.
“It’s very tough,” said Villarrial, a former offensive lineman with the Chicago Bears and the Buffalo Bills for 11 years. “Anyone who has been around football knows that mental toughness is something that you don’t just build overnight. It’s got to be repetition, repetition, repetition. You have to push the guys.”
The Red Flash finished 2-9 last season, and they have never recorded a winning season since the Northeast Conference installed competition in football in 1993. In fact, St. Francis has only been above .500 for one week - after beating St. Peter’s to open the 2006 season – during the past five years.
“Our senior class, especially some of these guys here, have been through a lot of hard times here,” Villarrial said. “They just want the opportunity to go out there and win. They want to go out with a confident staff that will trust in them...and how they play.”
Villarrial succeeds Dave Opfar, who had coached at St. Francis for eight seasons. Opfar is now the defensive coordinator at Duquesne.
One player who believes that the improvement can come this year is senior linebacker Scott Lewis, a former Bishop McCort standout who has broken the Red Flash and the Northeast Conference career record for tackles.
“This camp is the hardest that I’ve been through in the four years that I’ve been here,” Lewis said. “I think that we have all the tools that we need to have a winning season. We’ve always had great individual players, but we never had the discipline and coaches to put it all together.”
Lewis, who recorded 118 tackles last year, has 386 career tackles, which leads St. Francis.
He is just 61 tackles shy of the NEC record of 447 held by Kayode Mayowu, who played for Sacred Heart from 1999-2002.
Linebacker is a strength for the Red Flash, with Matthew Parker (103 tackles) also returning.
Villarrial will face what he calls a “very, very tough” schedule in his first season. The Red Flash have only four home games and seven on the road, with two full-scholarship Football Championship Subdivision teams, Liberty (Sept. 4) and California Polytechnic Institute (Oct. 30) on the schedule.
One of the challenges for Villarrial is upgrading the numbers and quality of the players he is recruiting.
“We brought in 51 freshmen this year, probably the biggest class that St. Francis football has ever brought in,” Villarrial said. “We are looking for big things for St. Francis football.”
The roster has 105 players at present, which has helped with the depth issues that the team has faced in the past. Of those, 20 are from schools in The Tribune-Democrat’s coverage area.
The Flash return 17 starters, including special team players. Villarrial said that he has not yet settled on a starting quarterback and will not make that decision until after an inter-squad scrimmage on Saturday. John Kelly, who completed 135 of 264 passes and seven touchdowns as the starter a year ago, is listed first on the depth chart.
The Northeast Conference champion will be awarded an automatic bid for the Football Championship Subdivision tournament this year for the first time.
The Red Flash will open at Liberty (Va.) at noon on Sept. 4.
Sacred Heart’s game at St. Francis on Sept. 18 will be televised on Fox College Sports and WATM-ABC 23.
