Foresthill football: Small team with big fight

Foresthill High School is one of the smallest schools in the Sac-Joaquin Section and plays in Division VII, the lowest CIF has to offer. However, what the Wildfires lack in size (physically and numbers) they make up for in character, coaching and heart. Several challenges come with coaching at a school as small as Foresthill, but head coach Mark Tumminelli is excited about the direction of the program as he enters his second year at the helm. Since the school is so small, it doesn't field freshman or JV teams, just one varsity squad. Unlike most schools in the area, Foresthill doesn't have a feeder program. Most of the players have never even played football competitively, let alone seen contact before. Tumminelli looks at this as an advantage, however, not a setback. "Most of our players are brand new to football, so we basically get to mold them from day one to play our style of football," he said. "We use a crawl, walk, run technique in practice. We start very slow and then we build on it." The Wildfires played four games in the spring season and went 0-4, but Tumminelli feels they grew a lot as a team and gained valuable experience. "Last season was an anomaly. We ended up playing against teams that we shouldn't have played. It was little Foresthill against teams like Bear River, our 20 guys against their 70 guys.The good thing was, our kids fought in every single game," he said. "Now, every single one of my players has varsity experience. Within our league, there was only one other team (Western Sierra) that even played last year." The Wildfires have several returning starters, many of whom had their first experience with football in the spring. "We think that going into this season, we are going to have a little bit of an advantage with that experience under our belt," Tumminelli said. Tumminelli is a seasoned head coach, having spent 22 years combined at Folsom, Oak Ridge, Cordova and Placer. He has coached NFL talent such as Jordan Richards and Austin Collie. Tumminelli has high expectations for the direction of his program and higher expectations for the character of his players. "I know that in 20 years, I will probably be gone, but if my players get together 20 years from now and raise a beer in my memory, then I will know I did my job," he said.