The new Hebron Academy football coach, Joe Bernier, carries a different clipboard as an admissions director at the school in his workday capacity.
So the diversity of hometowns on Bernier’s roster doesn’t shock him. It’s bound to get anyone else’s attention, though.
Boston. Quebec City. Queens. Harlem. California. Mexico.
“It’s kind of the nature. As a school we have students from 12 different countries and 16 states. It’s kind of typical of all the teams,” Bernier said. “I’m also the lacrosse coach, and my starting attack was from three different states, my midfield was Florida, Maine and Canada, my defense was two from Florida and one from Canada, and my goalie was from Maine.”
And besides, success isn’t contingent so much upon “where?” as “who?”
Bernier is delighted with the answer to that annual burning question. He welcomes four postgraduates with an impressive array of accomplishments and aspirations.
Elijah Burns, a 6-foot-1, 195-pound quarterback from Lansing, N.Y., was a last-minute pickup this summer.
“He’s very, very explosive,” Bernier said. “At the Nike combine he ran a 4.5 (second) confirmed 40.”
Tight end and linebacker Paul Rivera of Upland, Calif., hopes to play football for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Josiah Bramble, an inside linebacker, is the Harlem product, while running back Jeff Adegbe starred at Concord-Carlisle in Massachusetts.
They’re necessary additions to a program that went 0-8 and 2-6 the past two years and has gone through two new coaches in 12 months since Moose Curtis, in charge from 1975 to 2012, stepped back to an assistant’s role.
“Moose actually is retiring completely after this year,” Bernier said. “Things didn’t work out with the last coach, but I’m excited to take over and I plan to be here for a while.”
Some prep programs would look at an influx of 18 new players, including 14 undergraduates, as a scary indicator of inexperience.
In Hebron’s case, Bernier believes it is a good way to set aside the gloom and doom of the recent past.
“We definitely want to improve upon where the program has been the past couple years,” he said. “The group of new players is about the same number as we have returning. That will be good. We don’t have a lot of that losing mentality coming back. The whole mentality of how we prepare and practice has to change.”
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