Short-staffed Eagles ready for season

WINDOW ROCK

With a pretty thinned staff, first-year Crownpoint head football coach Roderick Harlan will be wearing many hats this year.

Harlan served the last four years as an assistant coach at Crownpoint High. Before that he was the head football coach at Thoreau Middle School for two years.

The Eagles open the season tonight at Wingate with Harlan and assistant coach Leonard Smiley guiding the team.
Despite the obvious, Harlan is embracing that arrangement.
“It’s not the best situation but it’s helping us with the boys taking ownership of the team,” he said.

With a strong core of returning players, Harlan said this setup is handing more responsibilities to those veterans.

“They are the ones working with the underclassmen,” he said of 15 returners. “They are teaching them to get better and that is really helping me, with me being a first-year coach. They are assisting in that role.”

Harlan said he wants his kids, especially the new ones, to make that connection that playing football is similar to what they are doing in school.

“It’s like the classroom where the kids are in a learning environment,” he said. “We want them to think and learn from their mistakes and correct them. I think what we have is a good combination even though we are stretched thin.”

As for the aforementioned veterans, Harlan will be looking to senior Noah Manuelito, senior Kaleo Kenneth, senior Durrell Etsitty and junior Isaiah Poole to lead the team.

Those individuals will be playing key positions, albeit Manuelito will serve as the backup quarterback this season. Junior Caleb Villa will take over those responsibilities with Poole being his main target.
“Noah is going to play various positions for us,” Harlan said
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According to the Crownpoint coach, Kenneth will anchor the line of scrimmage while Etsitty will share the duties of running the ball.

Harlan said they will employ a running attack, like they have in previous years.

“We’ve always been known to be a running team,” Harlan said. “We’re going to try and give some people a surprise, we want to switch up a couple of things. And maybe we can put in a couple of passing to spread our wings.”

Last week, Crownpoint did participate in a three-game scrimmage hosted by Navajo Prep.

“I think we did fairly well,” Harlan said. “There are some things we need to work on but with some hard work we can get to where we need to be.”

In this new realignment year, Crownpoint was placed in 3A District 1 with Newcomb, Tohatchi and Zuni.

“I think it’s a solid district even with Prep out of our district,” Harlan said. “I think we need to stay focus and the teams in the district will give each other some good competition.”

Harlan did note that the Eagles has three home games scheduled this year, starting with Ignacio, Colorado next Friday. They will host Hot Springs next week and on Sept. 30 they will entertain Dulce for homecoming.

“It’s going to be a bummer that we’re going to be a traveling team this year,” he said.

Nonetheless, he’s looking forward to the 2016 campaign as Crownpoint has a good chance of winning the district title as the other teams in the league.

“Hopefully we can bring home some wins,” he said. “It would be a good thing for the community but I just want my boys to have fun this year.”

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