By Piper Gallagher
Intern Watonga Republican
The Watonga Eagle football team is less than a week away from their first kickoff of the season. This year’s team is heavy with seniors and has lots of depth in their lineup. The team has also welcomed, and welcomed back, new coaches to their staff to aid for this year. Coach Clint Benway has come from the state of Texas to coach at his alma mater, Watonga High School.
Coach Benway graduated from Watonga in 1995 and participated in football while he was in school. He is the defensive coordinator for the Eagles, and, while bringing a new energy to the team, he is ecstatic to be a part of their vision for 2022. “I really enjoy coaching; it makes me excited. I like to have fun when I coach, and I like to bring a lot of energy to the practice and never have a bad day,” Benway said. He believes that the “want to win” is absolutely present for this year, and all of the kids have been really receptive to the coaching so far. Coach Benway always mentions to the boys about how important it is to “stack the days,” meaning getting better every single day. “These Watonga kids are definitely special”. We’re blue-collar mentality, we’re hay-haulers, we’re tractor-drivers… It’s what we do,” he said.
Head coach, Coach Skylar Watson is also preparing to show the community what he and his boys can accomplish this year. This is his second-year coaching at Watonga Public Schools. He’s been very impressed with the progress his boys have made already. He even joked saying, “We wake up every day and make gold records, we’re like Bruno Mars.” Watson is focusing on the fine details of football this year and getting back to the fundamentals with his boys in practice. “I felt like last year we did a good job at taking steps in the right direction as far as the process and as far as installing offense and defense, the big things. This year we spent more time on the intricacies and tuning up the fine details of things,” he said. He, similar to Coach Benway, aims to get better every day. “We talk to the kids all the time about preparation equals products,” Coach Watson said. His philosophy has been to get better at least 2% every single day.
The coach in charge of wide-receivers and defensive backs, Coach Byron Cole, is excited to see his own son play his senior year at Watonga. “It makes me feel old. I still remember watching him play pewee ball as a third grader and being this little dude that really didn’t know what he was doing. Coming in the last couple of years just really watching him grow and develop and being patient has been awesome… A lot of pride,” Cole said. As a whole, he feels like the confidence of the team is rising, and success is on the way. “Just from a team standpoint, not just as individuals, summer pride was great. The attitudes were great. I feel like they got a little taste of success last year, so they’re building off of it. Overall, we’re more of a team… Majority of our starters and players this year are seniors, so they’ve been together forever, and they really want a chance to do something special.”
The seniors on the team are also beginning to feel an excitement in the air about this season. “Compared to last year, it’s a lot faster improvement,” Ernesto Duenez said, “The whole program started a new era.” A lot of the boys have already begun to appreciate what Coach Benway has brought to the table. “He’s very adaptive, he uses new things to teach us the old way,” Caymon Wieczorrek said.
Noah Scraper, a senior returning to Watonga after spending a year at El Reno, outlined some of the main points of the season he and his team are focusing on this year. “A focus point is doing a lot better than what we’ve been doing throughout our whole high school career, and working as a team more often,” he said. Duenez noted that the team this year has a strong brotherhood, saying, “Now that we’re having a little bit more fun compared to some of the years that we’ve had, you’re gonna find a lot of that comradery.” As seniors, all the boys feel a bittersweetness about it being their last year. “We’ve all been so close these last, however many years, and we’re all just like, we could do this for more if we could,” Wieczorrek said. Even when Scraper was living in El Reno, he was still with his Eagle team every Friday night at all their games.
Even though it seems like the team lost a lot of depth from last year's seniors, the seniors of 2023 are ready to lead their team through the season. “It’s never been just about one person or two people, three people, it’s always been Watonga Football,” Duenez said.