Cherry Football Returning to Varsity After Four-Year Hiatus

The Tigers have been without a varsity squad since 2015, but have been recruiting over the years to get enough players to again field a team.

CHERRY, Minn. – As the Cherry High School football team prepares for week one of the Minnesota High School football season, this week of practices means a little more for the team.

“The kids are excited, there’s a little nervous but everyone’s fired up. This has been four years in the making and for our seniors who had their eighth grade year looking down the line with no varsity, it’s extra special for them,” Cherry head coach Jason Marsh said.

In 2015, Cherry decided to get rid of their varsity football program due to not enough players.

“I was coaching the junior high team at the time and after that year, we only had four kids for the varsity program the following year and they pulled the plug,” Marsh said.

“It hit hard. I wasn’t going to be able to play football with my big brother Kyle. It was a big dagger to this community who loves football,” senior cornerback Ryan Peterson added.

Since then, the players and coaches have been looking to get this program back to where they think it should be.

“I was approached about trying to bring it back and I said well if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right and it’s going to take some time. We’re getting to the point where our numbers are great. We’ve got 26 kids out here, we’ve got kids who are fired up and they’re really buying in,” Marsh said.

For the three seniors on the team (Peterson, Michels, Caple), playing under the Friday night lights is what they’ve been waiting for since eighth grade when they were told there would no longer be a varsity squad.

“I didn’t think I’d ever play varsity football anymore and then these past four and five years, we’ve really built the program back up. Getting this program back is the number one goal,” senior middle linebacker/fullback Austin Michels said.

“It’s awesome. I’m very excited because I didn’t have the experience in like four years, never played a varsity game so I’m just very excited,” senior quarterback Justin Caple said.

“I did not think we would get the numbers that we have right now. I thought football was going to be gone for a while,” Peterson added.

Now, the Tigers are looking forward to seeing what they can accomplish this season and are hoping to lay the foundation so no future Cherry player has to go through this again.

“I think seeing football back on Friday nights is going to get a lot of those younger kids back out. They’re going to be excited,” Marsh said.

“Winning matters, but it’s basically we’re happy to have our varsity back and grow and hopefully these other kids can have a fun time once they get up there,” Peterson said.

“There’s kind of a hole on Friday nights. I’ve had a lot of community members, a lot of folks who have played in the past who are very excited,” Marsh continued.

The Tigers will finally kick off the 2019 varsity season on the road at Lake of the Woods on Friday, Aug. 30.