They may have had one less win than a year before, but the Fort Lewis College football team is confident it took another step toward becoming a winning program.
The Skyhawks went 4-7 and finished seventh out of 10 teams in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference with a 3-6 conference record. In head coach John L. Smith’s second season coaching FLC, the Skyhawks went 3-8 and finished last in the RMAC with a 2-7 record.
Still, three of FLC’s losses came by seven points or fewer, and its three wins all came against quality opponents, including previously second-ranked CSU-Pueblo, the co-conference champion along with Colorado Mines and winners of four consecutive RMAC titles. The other wins came against Colorado Mesa (6-5, 5-4 RMAC) and Oklahoma Panhandle State (7-3), with both of those wins coming on the road.
But the Skyhawks still showed an inability to close out games, losing their final three contests despite first-half leads.
“Beat a team like Pueblo, who is a very good football team. Mesa is a very good football team, that’s two of the upper-echelon teams,” Smith said Saturday after his team’s season-ending 28-16 defeat to Chadron State. “(Chadron) is an upper-echelon team. We led the entire game and then not quite good enough to get over that hump.
“I think we made a ton of progress, know we’ve made a ton of progress, but there is a lot more that has to be done.”
Smith admitted in a recent Sports Illustrated article that turning around the Division II Skyhawks has been a much longer process than he initially envisioned. For starters, players are a lot different than those he coached in six Division I stops, including Arkansas, Louisville and Michigan State.
He spent a majority of the season shuffling players all over the field. Guys recruited as defensive backs were playing running back, quarterbacks playing safety, and even a bruising linebacker, Louis Mensah, finished as the team’s third-leading rusher.
Some of it was Smith readjusting players recruited by former FLC head coach Cesar Rivas-Sandoval to fill positions he felt they better suited, while some of it simply was trying to get the best athletes on the field wherever they fit.
“It’s a credit to these kids – guys like (Kaulana Waalani-Arroyo); we ask him, ‘Hey, you’ve gotta do what’s best for the team this week and come back to running back for us,’” Smith said of his senior defensive back that twice started at running back, once rushing for 100-plus yards, a benchmark for all ballcarriers.
Smith’s biggest goal is to build depth. The Skyhawks will lose 10 seniors from this year’s team, and that’s not the size of class Smith wants coming in and out each year. Plus, several of those 10 players were brought in as transfers by Smith his first season.
“Recruiting is going to be big. But the thing about it is we have more numbers coming back in the junior class than we’ve had. It’s hard. Normally what you try to do is work it out where you have 15-17 kids per year,” Smith said. “If you have that number each year, you’re not gonna have ups and downs; it will be more steady because your senior class. That’s what you need to stabilize a program.”
Mired through eight consecutive losing seasons, creating a winning mindset may be Smith’s toughest task. But he believes the team has laid a foundation for success, and he challenged the juniors returning next season to work even harder this offseason to get the team where he wants it to go.
“I’m very confident. We laid the foundation last year,” FLC senior offensive lineman Arthur Ray Jr., a transfer from Michigan State, said Saturday of the team’s chances going forward. “Last year, we were scrambling. We had some ‘me’ guys on the team last year and guys only about themselves. We weeded those guys out. The 10 of us seniors, we were all about the team. The juniors going to be seniors next year, oh yeah, they know how this feels. They know how winning, getting over that hump feels. Now we just gotta finish. There’s gonna be great things for the future of this team – glad I could be a part of it.”
Waalani-Arroyo experienced the 0-10 season in 2012. He had no idea what the team was in for when a head coach with the credibility of Smith was hired, but he’s glad he stayed along for the ride.
“When I first came in, first year, 0-10. Zero wins. You can’t tell me we’re not going in the right direction,” Waalani-Arroyo said. “Coach is bringing in new coaches, new pieces to the puzzle. Recruits coming in, we can compete with the best. We showed we can compete with the best. Personally, next few years, watch out for Fort Lewis.”
Mensah, who hopes to regain a year of eligibility to return to the team next year, took it one step further.
“I don’t think we can just compete with the best. We can beat the best; we showed that this year,” he said. “I feel sorry for the rest of the teams in this league, because they guys are real ballers. They’ve got heart.
“Coach John L., the staff, this whole program, the school, we all have heart. I hope I get my year back to come here and play again, but, if not, I know these guys are moving in the right direction. I’ll play for John L. and this team any day. I’ll lay down for any of these guys.”
If nothing else, one thing is clear: The players are buying in. Now, it’s just going to take more players to do the same, along with the Durango community and the Skyhawks’ fan base.
jlivingston@durangoherald.com
