Photo Credits: Salem News

This summer, the Ipswich Tiger Family brought in some new additions to the school’s football team. The Tigers welcomed Head Coach, Kevin Fessette, a former Springfield College football player and former college coach, to the Ipswich Tigers. Along with many assistant coaches: Coach Drislane, Coach Hanky, Coach Buckley, and Coach Drown. These coaches have one goal in mind: to win.

These coaches are determined to change the Tiger Football program and culture for the better and to bring a winning attitude to the Tigers. Another change has been made; a new weight room has been donated to the high school so that Tiger athletes can have more equipment to work with. The new equipment includes new dumbbells and new lifting stations for bench and squat exercises.

During the summer, the team took advantage out of the weight room. They worked every day to become stronger. After their lift, the team then did conditioning to get in better shape, running and becoming more faster off of the snap of the ball. The Tigers did a camp at Merrimack College to get back into the groove of things and see where the talent is and they competed with the other teams that attended the camp. Some of the other schools were Danvers, Central Catholic, North Andover, Georgetown, and many more. 

The Tigers really got to know the coaches over the course of the summer during their workouts and when training camp started.  The team came together and treated each other like a big family.  Preseason was the main time when the Tigers clicked. The Tiger Captains, Jake Long, Josh Brown, and Alex Morris, really started to like the coaches and what they were bringing to the team. “I love them; they seem like they are one of us in high school, really good coaches and fun to talk to,” said Captain, Wide Out and Corner back Alex Morris. We also have a brand new offense that we run; it’s the Triple Option. At the beginning of the season we continued off the Spread Offense from last year, but then Coach Fessette decided to make a switch. I asked Captain Quarterback and Safety Jake Long about his opinion of the new offense: “I do and I don’t like it; I like the spread more because of the personnel and athletes we have.” I also interviewed Captain Linebacker and Fullback Josh Brown. I asked him about how he feels about this season compared to last.  He said that there is more “more positive energy. I didn’t enjoy last season; last season was tough.” As a player of the team, I agree with what the Captains had to say.

These coaches bring a lot of things to the table to help us become more successful and win. Ipswich hasn’t had a successful football season in a long time. It was time to make some changes and this team believes that these coaches can do something special for this team and turn it all around to become a dominant football team in the near future.