Etzel

FOXBURG — Winning isn't everything. Or is it?

These days, A-CValley football coach Randy Lemmon and girls basketball coach Dave Etzel might believe it's the latter.

Neither figures to return to his respective post next season, though both would like to.

Lemmon's position was opened at Monday night's school board meeting. The Falcons have won one game in the past two years and are 4-23 in Lemmon's three seasons.

A-CValley was outscored by an average of 41-7 during a winless 2006 season.

Etzel resigned as varsity girls basketball coach after his team dropped 46 consecutive games over the past two years.

The Falcons were outscored by an average of 63-16 this season, scoring 20 or more points only seven times.

But his freshman team lost only one game after losing just twice as eighth-graders the year before.

"It's hard, but it's for the best,"Etzel said about his resignation. "To stay on as coach now would be selfish on my part. Too many people want a change, and I don't want to cause any problems."

A-C Valley has had numerous coaching changes in recent years in football and girls basketball.

"We haven't been able to put a junior high team on the field or develop any linemen over the past few years,"Lemmon said. "That finally caught up to us.

"Because freshmen aren't allowed to play junior high football, we lose all of the kids who are too big to play Midget football. By the time they're high school freshmen, it's hard to get them interested in playing again."

The high school football program had only 30 players last season with nearly half of them coming from the Cranberry School District.The football co-op agreement with Cranberry recently was extended for another four years."The board told me that opening up the position will generate some excitement and get more kids to come out for the team,"Lemmon said. "I can't say that it won't."But people close to the situation know we're not losing because of the coach. For one, we'd love to have a playing facility the kids can get excited about."Randy Burrows and Jack Walker shared a volunteer assistant football coaching position on Lemmon's staff. Both are parents of Falcons football players.Walker spoke in defense of Lemmon at the board meeting. An Oil City newspaper reported Tuesday that some parents expressed their concerns aboout injured players being sent back into games to the board.Lemmon vehemently refutes any accusations of inappropriate handling of his team."I heard grumblings from parents when I wouldn't send a kid in off the bench late in a lopsided game after that kid had been practicing all week,"Lemmon said. "But I'm not going to play a kid who isn't ready. I don't care what the score is.Lemmon has been part of A-C Valley football since 1969, when he was a junior high player. If he is not rehired as head coach, he hopes to remain with the program in some capacity."I care about this program a lot. I would never go anywhere else," he said. "I want it to succeed, but we're still finding small numbers."Etzel had no seniors on this year's girls basketball team after the Falcons went winless with six seniors the previous year.Choosing to keep his freshman group together, Etzel had little player movement with the junior varsity or varsity squad this season."We played this year with pretty much the same group as last year, minus those graduated seniors,"he said. "I was one of the few people with realistic expectations this year."You can't take just any horse, go to the Kentucky Derby and expect to win."Etzel taught a number of girls on the basketball team when they were sixth-graders."I care about them,"he said. "Other than myself coaching the past two years, these girls have had a different coach every year since sixth grade. It's tough to be successful that way."Last year, I moved some of the freshmen up to junior varsity and they were getting beaten down on the floor. I decided not to do that to this year's freshmen. They've known nothing but success and I wanted to keep it that way."

Lemmon