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Loucile is looking for a Lake Erie getaway in June for three kids, ages 1, 3, and 5.
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Track HR Research
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'Tecmo Bowl' recreation of Super Bowl XLIV
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Do IT this week: Layering
By David Lee Morgan Jr.
Beacon Journal staff writer
POSTED: 06:16 p.m. EST, Nov 18, 2009
PENINSULA: Shakespearean literature and high school football.
They go together like peanut butter and jelly.
Ham and eggs.
At least that's what Woodridge coach Eric Ervin thinks.
The Bulldogs (10-2) will face Chagrin Falls (12-0) in a Division IV regional championship game Saturday at Twinsburg. Woodridge is in the state playoffs for the first time in school history.
As Ervin prepares his team for the matchup, he said he couldn't help but put this game into the context of William Shakespeare's classic play Macbeth.
In that play, one of the themes that is explored is revenge — avenging past disappointments and shortcomings.
''This is very special game for us,'' Ervin said. ''We normally don't get a chance to play a team twice and against Chagrin Falls, we've been on the losing end three times.''
Woodridge is hoping to avenge a 32-26 loss to Chagrin Falls earlier this season. The Bulldogs also lost two other close games to Chagrin Falls, by six points and by one point, in recent years.
''Being an English teacher, and someone who likes literature, this is almost storybook to be playing Chagrin Falls again,'' Ervin said. ''I love Shakespeare because what he was writing about all those years ago is relative today. Times change and technology changes, but people don't change. We still love deeply and in some cases we hate deeply. We all sometimes want revenge. So any one of Shakespeare's stories, you can drop them into 2009 and it would be relevant.''
Junior starting defensive end Bryan Peters said Ervin's literature lessons have had a big impact on the team.
''I'm in coach Ervin's class and we read the The Crucible,'' Peters said. ''The thing that stood out to me while we discussed that was Coach telling us how the season was going to be a crucible for us.''
Then, Peters recited exactly what Ervin said.
''He told us, 'Men will play in Week 11 and boys will go home Week 10,' '' Peters said. ''He said, 'You men will be playing deep into the playoffs.' That stuck with me from the time he said that. It was after we lost to Chagrin Falls and I was down. But once he told us that, I was so pumped up. He told us we would get another chance at playing them and here we are.''
Junior safety Sebastian Dodds said: ''[Coach] talks about stories from the past and he's so good at comparing them. You wouldn't even think that they are related to today, but he can look at them in so many different ways and translate them into what you're doing right now.''
Ervin took another literary classic and used its message to motivate his players and to give them a sense of inspiration.
It was Harper Lee's To Kill A Mocking Bird. Ervin said there is a passage in the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel set in the Great Depression where Atticus Finch, a lawyer and man of strong moral convictions, says: ''Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It's knowing you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.''
Ervin said that passage somewhat describes the challenge of playing Chagrin Falls.
''It's exactly like when we scrimmaged Buchtel or Warren Harding a few years ago,'' Ervin said. ''We may have been smaller but our guys went out there and gave it our best shot and teams respect you after that. Now, our kids will take those lessons that they learned in those scrimmages and in all the games they play here and they will apply them to life. What's most important to me is that they see that this whole experience is something bigger them themselves.''
David Lee Morgan Jr. can be reachedat dlmorgan@thebeaconjournal.com. Read the Varsity Letters high school blog at http://www.ohiomm.com/blogs/varsity_letters/. Also on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ABJ_Preps.
PENINSULA: Shakespearean literature and high school football.
They go together like peanut butter and jelly.
Ham and eggs.
At least that's what Woodridge coach Eric Ervin thinks.
The Bulldogs (10-2) will face Chagrin Falls (12-0) in a Division IV regional championship game Saturday at Twinsburg. Woodridge is in the state playoffs for the first time in school history.
As Ervin prepares his team for the matchup, he said he couldn't help but put this game into the context of William Shakespeare's classic play Macbeth.
In that play, one of the themes that is explored is revenge — avenging past disappointments and shortcomings.
''This is very special game for us,'' Ervin said. ''We normally don't get a chance to play a team twice and against Chagrin Falls, we've been on the losing end three times.''
Woodridge is hoping to avenge a 32-26 loss to Chagrin Falls earlier this season. The Bulldogs also lost two other close games to Chagrin Falls, by six points and by one point, in recent years.
''Being an English teacher, and someone who likes literature, this is almost storybook to be playing Chagrin Falls again,'' Ervin said. ''I love Shakespeare because what he was writing about all those years ago is relative today. Times change and technology changes, but people don't change. We still love deeply and in some cases we hate deeply. We all sometimes want revenge. So any one of Shakespeare's stories, you can drop them into 2009 and it would be relevant.''
Junior starting defensive end Bryan Peters said Ervin's literature lessons have had a big impact on the team.
''I'm in coach Ervin's class and we read the The Crucible,'' Peters said. ''The thing that stood out to me while we discussed that was Coach telling us how the season was going to be a crucible for us.''
Then, Peters recited exactly what Ervin said.
''He told us, 'Men will play in Week 11 and boys will go home Week 10,' '' Peters said. ''He said, 'You men will be playing deep into the playoffs.' That stuck with me from the time he said that. It was after we lost to Chagrin Falls and I was down. But once he told us that, I was so pumped up. He told us we would get another chance at playing them and here we are.''
Junior safety Sebastian Dodds said: ''[Coach] talks about stories from the past and he's so good at comparing them. You wouldn't even think that they are related to today, but he can look at them in so many different ways and translate them into what you're doing right now.''
Ervin took another literary classic and used its message to motivate his players and to give them a sense of inspiration.
It was Harper Lee's To Kill A Mocking Bird. Ervin said there is a passage in the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel set in the Great Depression where Atticus Finch, a lawyer and man of strong moral convictions, says: ''Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It's knowing you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.''
Ervin said that passage somewhat describes the challenge of playing Chagrin Falls.
''It's exactly like when we scrimmaged Buchtel or Warren Harding a few years ago,'' Ervin said. ''We may have been smaller but our guys went out there and gave it our best shot and teams respect you after that. Now, our kids will take those lessons that they learned in those scrimmages and in all the games they play here and they will apply them to life. What's most important to me is that they see that this whole experience is something bigger them themselves.''
David Lee Morgan Jr. can be reachedat dlmorgan@thebeaconjournal.com. Read the Varsity Letters high school blog at http://www.ohiomm.com/blogs/varsity_letters/. Also on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ABJ_Preps.
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