Springfield Central Football Embraces “IMG Expectations”
Central Hosts IMG Academy on Saturday at 5 pm The game is sold out, but can be streamed on FloSports.com
Valdamar Brower is constantly seeking challenges for his program, so when the Springfield Central High School head football coach heard IMG Academy was willing to fly his squad down from Massachusetts to play against the national power in Bradenton, Fla., it was hard to imagine anything much better.
But then something better came along.
IMG wanted to come up to Springfield to play the game.
“I was like, ‘That’s fricking awesome,’” Brower recalls when he was told of the change by Springfield Public Schools athletic director Dwayne Early.
“‘Yeah, let’s bring them here. We want home games. We’re used to being road warriors and people don’t really like coming to Springfield.’”
Since turning the Golden Eagles into a regional power and winning a pair of state titles in 2018 and 2019, Brower has found people don’t really like playing Central regardless of the venue these days.
This offseason, he had trouble filling open dates in September despite previous agreements with some schools. Central Catholic High School was one program that never wavered on its commitment to come to Springfield for a game after missing last season’s scheduled matchup because of COVID.
“They were a program of their word,” said Brower. “Some people don’t fulfill two-year agreements. So, we have a very high level of respect for Coach (Chuck Adamopoulos) and their program and their kids.”
Even with BC High locking in a two-year agreement that began this year, Central was still left a game short.
Brower reached out to more than a dozen other Division-I programs in the state about playing a game.
“We couldn’t get answers,” he says.
So, he received permission from Early to look for games outside of the state. Brower eventually connected with Prep Gridiron Logistics, a company that serves as a matchmaker for top high school programs across the country.
Brower received an Excel sheet of open dates for teams nationwide and made note that IMG had the same open dates as Central.
“I’m just looking at the sheet, kind of looking at all the different teams and all the possibilities,” Brower recalls. “Then the guy reached back out and said IMG would pay to fly Central down.
“I was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be great coming out of COVID to bring our kids on a little field trip to Florida? Just like a family celebration, a family vacation, obviously a business trip, but just to be able to get on a plane and do that coming out of COVID and then have the kids look forward to that.’ That’s what I was thinking in my head.”
Early saw a potential fit as well.
“Being such a nationally-recognized team, they were having trouble booking on the national front,” Early says. “We were having trouble booking within the state. They’re a very, very strong opponent just like we are a very strong team within the state.
“We both had the same issue, so we thought, ‘Why not give it a shot and book each other and get a good game in?’”
But agreeing to play a program like IMG isn’t something that’s done on a whim.
Coached by former NFL linebacker Pepper Johnson, IMG is currently ranked the #2 football team in the entire country, behind only California’s Mater Dei.
In 2020, IMG was named national champion by USA Today, MaxPreps and High School Football All-America after an 8-0 season. In its ninth year as a program, IMG has won 73 of the 78 total games it has played.
Since its inception, IMG has become the premier high school in the country for college recruiters. Its roster is full of elite players from across the nation, who choose to sacrifice traditional high school experiences to enroll at the Florida boarding school with the goal of improving their chances of earning elite scholarship offers and getting an early start preparing for the world of college football.
In December of 2020, IMG saw 16 players sign scholarships with Division-I football programs, including schools like Alabama, Georgia, Florida State, Michigan and Boston College among others. Four of those players were rated as Top 40 prospects nationally by 247Sports.
IMG’s current roster is once again loaded.
OL Tyler Booker: Alabama Commit
CB Daylen Everette: Clemson Commit
DE Jihaad Campbell: Clemson Commit
S Keon Sabb: Clemson Commit
QB AJ Duffy: Florida St. Commit
OL Aliou Bah: Florida St. Commit
RB Kaytron Allen: Penn St. Commit
CB Ade Willie: Michigan St. Commit
S Trevon Howard: Northwestern Commit
WR Shawn Miller: Illinois Commit
OL Dylan Lopez: Oregon St. Commit
TE Jaleel Skinner: Alabama, Clemson, Texas, Miami, Florida Offers
DL Dominick James: Ohio St., Texas A&M, South Carolina Offers
And those are just IMG’s seniors.
The rest of the roster is similarly stocked with immense talent.
IMG has 8 of the top 100 players in the entire country in the Class of 2023, according to 247Sports, including Joenel Aguero, a Massachusetts native who is close friends with Central star quarterback Pop Watson and wide receiver Joe Griffin.
Simply put, IMG is a powerhouse in every sense of the word.
Knowing this, Brower held a meeting with his offensive coordinator, Bill Watson, before accepting the challenge.
“Me and Coach Watson probably talked for two hours about the pros and cons of playing IMG,” Brower recalls. “Should we do it?
“We came out of that conversation, like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to do it.’”
They realized they would need to change the expectations of the program, a challenge they quickly embraced.
“We said we were going to create IMG expectations,” Brower recalls. “IMG expectations for the coaching staff. IMG expectations for all of our players. IMG expectations for our parents. IMG expectations for our school, athletic director, our city, et cetera, et cetera.”
The response was immediate.
“We have a coaches meeting and everybody’s real excited,” Brower remembers. “It was just a different kind of energy. It was like, ‘This is freaking awesome. This is great.’”
And then, Brower got word from Early that the plans had changed and IMG would be traveling North instead.
“I don’t know exactly what happened, but basically Mr. Early said, ‘They’re coming to Springfield,’” Brower says.
“There was no reason for that,” Early says. “I was talking with the AD in charge of football at IMG. We had first discussed us coming down there and then it just came about where they wanted the experience to come up North.”
Some of Brower’s players have never been on an airplane and a trip to Florida would have been a memorable experience, but so will playing IMG at home and it certainly lessens the logistics on Central’s end.
“We’re playing on a football field,” Brower says now. “Logistically, for me, it’s just, ‘Do we have water? Do we have our camera crew?’”
The rest of his focus is on preparing his team to win the game.
And despite the rankings and scholarship offers on IMG’s sidelines, that’s exactly what Central is preparing to do.
“That’s a really, really big challenge,” Brower acknowledges.
Early says the acceptance of that challenge proves the level of commitment Brower and his staff have for their players.
“They have confidence to put our local kids in a region that is not known for football where they’re now being asked to play against top-level teams, not only in the region, but in the country,” says Early. “I think it just shows the hard work they’ve put it in and the belief they have in our student-athletes that we can get on that field and line up against some of the top-notch teams in the country, not just the area.”
The Golden Eagles bounced back from an opening loss to Central Catholic with a rout of BC High School last week and they can now turn their focus to the game which has loomed large on the schedule for months.
Brower says the plan is to use everything at their disposal to hang in the game and be in a position to win it in the end.
“Using all of the football rules and all the football tempos and all the football strategies,” he says. “All of those unwritten rules.”
And Brower knew exactly where to look to find them, previous opponents.
“We have guys that are going to go play Division-I and we play teams that don’t have the same roster, learning from them,” he says. “How did they stay in the game or how did they sneak up and beat us? Or how did they keep it this close as long as possible?
“Me and Watson talked about all of the strategies and techniques throughout the years that he experienced when he was an assistant coach at Putnam and when he was the head coach at Putnam and then our experiences together. Then my experiences throughout my football career. So just trying to look at all those things and potentially usually them.”
The matchup with IMG is just further evidence of years of hard work under Brower, who has been Central’s head coach since 2008, according to Early.
“We’ve got a handful of kids who have went on to some Ivy League schools,” says Early. “We’ve got a handful of kids right now being recruited by some top Division-I programs.”
Griffin Jr. is currently committed to Boston College while still being pursued by other elite programs while Watson has scholarship offers from schools like Oregon, Michigan, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arizona and Pittsburgh.
The IMG game will showcase Central on a completely new stage and impact the program moving forward.
“It’s going to give us exposure and it’s going to give us experience against some of the top players in the country who are going to some of the top schools in the country, which is basically what our overall goal is; to produce top-level athletes who are able to compete against top-level players in the country,” says Early.
“Exposure-wise, it’s going to be streamed across the country on FloSports.com. IMG carrying the roster of four and five-star athletes, they have developed a great following and us being on the field with them, maybe some of the people who follow them will start to follow some of our players.”
Being the defending national champion or the #2-ranked team in the country won’t give IMG any extra points when the game starts on Saturday night.
Every Day Starts At Zero.
It’s a mantra Brower has used to keep his team grounded in the wake of tremendous success and one he should be able to call on in this rare instance where his team is the underdog.
But more than anything, it’s an attitude Brower wants his kids to embrace in the totality of their lives.
“Every day starts at zero is obviously to appreciate and respect everything you do,” Brower explains. “Can you look in the mirror or can’t you? Guess what, when you wake up the next day, you have a chance to eat breakfast, be to school on time, have a great academic day, be at strength and conditioning giving your maximum effort, mow the lawn, throw away the garbage, do your homework and try to get to as close to 100 as possible.
“Be able to take a shower or brush your teeth at the end of the day and be able to look in the mirror and say, ‘I got to 99 or 97 today or I got 100, so I’m pretty good.’ But then you’ve got to do it all over again the next day. If you’re able to reach those 90s on a daily basis, that’s a pretty good deal. You want to string together as many 90-plus days as possible.”
It’s clear Brower has found his calling.
“I’m crazy and I’m realizing it more and more, but I love this and I love the kids and I want them to be the best they can be. I don’t know if football is the only way I know how, but football is it for me and I don’t know why, but whoever wants to be on this crazy train with us, every day is going to start at zero.”
