Chaparral Cowboys Coach Bill Froman has been with the team for the past three years. He says his team is ready for Friday’s game against the Trojans.
The Cowboys play in the Sunrise League of Division 1-A.
Chaparral is rebuilding its team and is slowly improving with a young group of kids. Froman went from a team winning only one game to winning four — sound familiar? There are many other similarities to the Pahrump Valley program.
This year the Cowboys were given a huge boost by an anonymous donor who donated $550,000. Of course Pahrump didn’t get a donor that big. The money went to buy new uniforms, field equipment, weights and pads.
“I would say we received $170,000 just for the weight room alone and $40,000 in new field equipment like sleds for the football team,” he said. “Of course, all this new stuff doesn’t mean anything if you don’t win on Friday.”
When asked if he has seen any changes, he replied, “The kids work really hard in the weight room. We have 18 squat racks, so we can move kids through, and there is no standing around. You get more work in. We are a weight lifting school. We won nationals two years in a row, so our kids are strong. That is a real advantage. Out of all that gear the kids like to know they are wearing and using cool stuff.”
Froman believes his program is on the right track. The equipment is good, but does he have the building blocks for a good team? Froman seems to think so.
He has 20 returning letter winners from last year playing on his varsity squad.
“We played a lot of sophomores and freshman on the varsity last year including the quarterback,” he said. “One of them was our middle linebacker — a Pahrump kid — Richard Hernandez. He will be striking for Pahrump. He squats 425 pounds and brings the wood. You will see him, he will make sure of that. He was second team all-conference as a freshman and led our conference in tackles last year.”
Froman knows his team is improving, but when asked how it will do against division leader Moapa he was like most coaches and answered indirectly. “Moapa graduated a ton of players and our big ‘Hoss’ pushed their big Hoss around last year. If you only watched one exchange, our best player against their best player you would have thought we won by 60 points last year.” They didn’t and lost.
Last year the Cowboy fans truly didn’t know which team was going to show up. They beat Sierra Vista, 28-25; Western, 34-6; El Dorado, 52-14; and Sunrise Mountain, 40-10, but lost all their other games. Sunrise Mountain was their only conference win. The coach blamed it on youthful inexperience. “We had six sophomores and a freshman on the back end of the defense, there is going to be growing pains.”
Froman’s team had four games where they piled up the points but were not able to clinch the wins in conference. A good example was Virgin Valley.
“We had six turnovers in that game. We beat them bad, but we lost by 3 points. When you put a sophomore in the backfield and a freshman on the trigger that stuff happens. We rotated a lot of guys through last year just because we knew this year’s team would be better. We got the young pups some playing time. We had to evacuate the thinking that if you win your opener that is a good season. For a lot of years, one win over here was a big deal. Now we don’t see it that way.”
Trojans Coach Joe Clayton can relate. Last year he did the same thing with his sophomores. Many of them played in varsity games at the end of the season. Clayton won two games last year and he, too, is trying to turn the Trojans into winners.
The Cowboys run a double wing offense which has two wing backs and double tight ends in the formation. Clayton said, “The old double wing is a powerful running formation and similar, but not the same as the Trojans’.”
When the Trojans came to scout his team last Saturday, Froman hid as much as he could from prying eyes.
“We saw the Trojans’ coaches coming so we only showed one play. We ran it right and left and as soon as your coaches left we opened up,” he said.
Froman saw the tape of the Trojans scrimmage with Valley High School and had many praises for Pahrump — not so much for Valley.
“If Valley was not so piss-poor, you would have opened your playbook more. Valley was as bad a football team as I have seen in 15 years. The Trojans scored at will. This was not the old Pahrump from when I was at Bonanza. This is not that Pahrump. That is a good football team. That backfield has a pile of speed,” the coach said.
Froman believes the game will be one fought in the trenches.
“We are excited and it should be a good football game. It will be a good physical game. You guys will rap us in the mouth and we will rap you. We will see. I left that scrimmage and I told buddies of mine and they said, ‘ahhh Pahrump.’ I said, ‘This is a different Pahrump team, you better prepare if you got Pahrump on the schedule.’”
Froman believes the game will come down to who can run the best. He says his backfield is just as strong and fast as the backs for the Trojans.
“We are fast,” Froman said. “We got four of five backs that all run 11 flat or better in the 100-meter dash. We had the third best 4×100-meter relay team in the state last year. We are lickety-split, but of course it don’t mean anything if you can’t get loose. It could be an awful bus ride. I hate those long bus rides home after a Moapa ass kicking.”
Froman definitely does not think his second string will be playing the second half against Troy.