Another Season On The Gridiron — Newtown’s 42nd Youth Football Campaign Set To Kick Off

By Andy Hutchison

Spread out across the Treadwell Park field, various ages of up-and-coming football players have been hard at work honing skills and getting ready for another fall of pigskin battles on the gridiron. Newtown’s youth football and cheerleading program will kick off its 42nd campaign with regular season games in the final weekend of August.

Six teams — the 79ers for 7–9 year olds, along with fourth through eighth grad squads — will tangle with Candlewood Valley League opponents as they vie for spots in the postseason.

The program, when it started back in 1969, was sponsored by the Newtown Lions Club. The Pop Warner organization switched to American Youth Football in 2005. When the program first started, there were 35 boys on two football teams and 13 cheerleaders. Now, there are 200-plus boys on six teams, and more than 100 girls cheering them on.

The program has experienced years of success, with teams winning league and state titles, and going on to reach the national tournament. Newtown sent teams to the American Youth Football National Championships in 2006 and 2009.

“So everybody’s really hungry this year to go out and really do their best,” league president Sean Dunn said.

In 2010, his son Julian Dunn went on to play on the league’s All-Star team which finished in third place among eight all star teams from around the country.

Dunn says the youth football program has the least expensive registration fee of all of Newtown’s youth sports programs, made possible by the tremendous amount of fundraising that is done. He said there are roughly 400 volunteers, from coaches to parents who run concession stands. The fundraising efforts offset the approximate $600 cost to outfit each player with necessary equipment, from socks to helmets.

The league of 300-plus athletes has grown from the field to sidelines, with former players coming back to coach, Dunn said. “It’s almost like a fraternity feeling. Once you’re in this program you’ll never leave,” he said.

All of the coaches are volunteers, including one of the newer assistant clipboard-holders, Newtown High junior receiver/safety Dan Hebert. “It’s great to help out and teach what I’ve learned throughout my years in football,” said Hebert, who works with the eighth grade team. Hebert says he enjoys giving back to the program in which he developed his skills, and likes seeing the players who will be a part of the NHS program next year.

The NHS program, led by head coach and former Newtown youth gridder Steve George, is mimicked in the youth program, with coaches following the playbooks and instilling the same style of play George expects from the varsity ball carriers, linebackers, punters, and quarterbacks.

Consistency has been a big part of the smooth transition from the youth program to the high school ranks, the coaches say. Jack Shpunt, who started coaching in the old Lions Club days back in 1972, has been a fixture along the sidelines. Shpunt, the oldest of five boys, lost his father when he was in college. His mom asked him to coach one of his younger brothers and he’s been a part of the program ever since.

“I like it and there were years when they really needed me,” Shpunt said. He’s coached a variety of age groups and helps out where needed, running drills and sharing his knowledge of the game of X’s and O’s on the practice fields.

The 62-year-old lifetime Newtown resident has seen a lot of change in the program throughout the years. The term “spread offense” may not go back to Shpunt’s early days of coaching, but the spread offense setup has always been in the playbook, he said, explaining that they called it “pop corn” or “Mickey Mouse,” or other code names a few decades ago. “Terminology changes all the time, but football doesn’t change,” Shpunt notes.

“The biggest change is when we went from Pop Warner to American Youth Football,” said Shpunt, adding that it was a move he believes is beneficial to the players. They are now grouped by grade rather than weight, which is how it was done under the Pop Warner regulations.

Shpunt has seen players come and go, uniforms and mascots change change and, most notably, plenty of growth in numbers. “I went through many years where we had 13, 14 kids on the team and it’s good to see a lot more kids involved,” Shpunt said.

“The kids are great. That’s one of the reasons I stay with it. I think it helps me stay young — or feel young,” Shpunt said.