And for the first time in the history of Greeneview football, the stadium lights will be shining for Week 11.
After seasons of struggles, the Greeneview Rams make their high school football playoff debut Saturday night. Greeneview (9-1) hosts Cincinnati Mariemont (7-3) in Division V, Region 18. Kickoff is 7 p.m.
It’s been a long time coming for the Rams. Entering this season, 88 of the 715 teams playing football as members of the Ohio High School Athletic Association had never made the playoffs. Ten of those 88 teams — including Greeneview — finally made it.
“We’ve got a winning mentality going with this team,” said senior offensive lineman/linebacker Adrian Harding. “We kind of made it a tradition to lose and we’ve gotten away from that. Now it’s a tradition to win. You see it not just with us, but you see it in the grades below us, too, that winning mentality.”
Since 2001, the first year Greeneview played in the Ohio Heritage Conference, the Rams had 11 straight losing seasons. They never won more than three games in a season (3-7 in 2001) and had two winless seasons including one as recent as 201o.
The Rams plan to keep bucking that trend just like they have the past three seasons. The junior varsity team went undefeated, as did the eighth-grade team. The seventh-graders finished 7-2.
“We want to be a program,” said fourth-year coach Neal Kasner, who also guided Mechanicsburg to its first playoff appearance, in 1999. “We want to be a team that every year is challenging for the league championships and the playoffs.”
Kasner plans to use his experience at Mechanicsburg to help Greeneview on Saturday. He’s keeping the week low-key and treating it like just another week of practice. That wasn’t the case at Mechanicsburg.
“I think we made it a celebrity thing. It was kind of a promotion of the program and we wanted to roll out the red carpet for the kids,” Kasner said. “I think that maybe distracted from the game a little bit.”
Having that coveted playoff game at home — the top four seeds host first-round games — is a plus for the Rams and their fans.
“Like our coach tells us, it’s just another game,” Harding said. “Same football, same rules, nothing different. That’s what it comes down to.”
Well, except for those downtown decorations and the electric atmosphere around school.
“It’s great,” Harding said. “Just playing with these guys the last four years and building this program, it’s a great feeling to earn something like this. … There’s definitely a lot on the line now. You go out and win or else your high school career is done.”
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