Despite early-season losses, Titans still confident that first win is coming

Posted 10/16/14

The easy thing to do is to look at the Toll Gate football team’s performance thus far in league play and say “Here we go again.”

The Titans are 0-3, and even after a move down to Division …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

E-mail
Password
Log in

Despite early-season losses, Titans still confident that first win is coming

Posted

The easy thing to do is to look at the Toll Gate football team’s performance thus far in league play and say “Here we go again.”

The Titans are 0-3, and even after a move down to Division III thanks to three consecutive winless seasons in Division II, nothing has changed at this point in terms of winning and losing.

It’s been another season where the loss column fills up, and the win column stays empty.

But Toll Gate isn’t looking at it that way, as it gears up for what it thinks is one of its most winnable games of the year at home against Hope on Saturday at 10 a.m.

Even as the going has been tough, the Titans have stayed optimistic. They think that win is coming, and coming soon.

“On Monday, we had a JV game in Middletown and I had 42 kids in practice,” said Toll Gate head coach Jim Stringfellow. “I had 42 kids in practice today. We’re going in this weekend looking at Hope as a team that we can beat. Everyone is positive. No one is hanging their heads.”

There are a few different lenses with which to view Toll Gate’s slow start. The downside, obviously, are the losses. Two of them, in particular, have been very lopsided, which is the way that the majority of the games ended up the past few years.

After a week one loss in which it played Narragansett tough, falling just 20-14, Toll Gate has lost consecutive games to East Greenwich and Middletown by a combined score of 76-0.

Last week against the Islanders, the Titans turned the ball over four times, gave up three defensive touchdowns and lost 42-0.

It was Toll Gate’s 27th consecutive loss, dating back to 2010, in league games.

“We’re still plugging along,” Stringfellow said. “We broke down the East Greenwich game, and it was one-sided again. They were just good. EG is good. They were physical – and they were a lot more physical than we were. Middletown scored only 14 offensive points and we did the rest on turnovers.”

The flip side to evaluating those losses is to look at the opponents. Narragansett is a perennial contender and sits at 2-2. In that game, the Titans could absolutely have come away with a win if a few plays had gone differently.

The next two games were against maybe the best two teams in Division III. Middletown is the only unbeaten team in the division with a 3-0 mark, and East Greenwich is 3-1, with its only loss coming to Middletown.

Narragansett’s only two losses are to Middletown and East Greenwich. Essentially, it’s entirely possible that Toll Gate has played the three best teams in D-III. With that in mind, the Titans should be in line to be much more competitive going forward.

“Middletown, East Greenwich, Narragansett – that’s one two and three,” Stringfellow said. “It’s a shootout for fourth. Hopefully we’re there.”

This week’s opponent, the Blue Wave, is 1-2, and was also shutout in its past two games by Classical and Lincoln.

They’re without question a team that hasn’t been as good as Toll Gate’s first three opponents.

But any wins that the Titans will pick up will start with the small, yet dedicated senior class. They’re a group that has seen nothing but league losses since they came to the school as freshmen.

Stringfellow emphasized that they’ve all maintained their composure throughout the difficult early season, and aren’t resigned to another winless year.

“I’m not getting that at all,” Stringfellow said. “We had a talk with them today at practice, and all the seniors are very positive. They’re coming in and they’re looking for their first win against Hope.”

There should be other winnable games on Toll Gate’s schedule as well. It’s at 3-1 Classical in two weeks in what may be a tough game, but then it hosts cross-city rival Pilgrim in what should be a battle of evenly-matched teams.

It’s at 3-1 Lincoln the week after that, then plays at home against fellow winless Ponaganset.

The Chieftains have already lost to Pilgrim, which snapped its long league-losing streak earlier this season.

“If everything goes right, anything can happen,” Stringfellow said. “It’s football.”

Despite the poor performances as of late, Toll Gate still also believes that its ground game can continue to be effective going forward. The Titans ran the ball well in the Injury Fund against Warwick Vets, then again in a non-league win PCD/Wheeler/Juanita Sanchez, and then once more in the loss to Narragansett.

They struggled to pound the ball against East Greenwich, but did sustain a few drives against Middletown and still cracked the 100-yard mark.

The Titans have also made a change at quarterback, putting freshman Anthony Vann into the starting role.

It adds up to a team that hasn’t lost its confidence. There are five more league games, and Toll Gate is determined to break the losing streak.

“I really do think we can get a couple wins this year, definitely,” Stringfellow said.

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here