Harbor High School is long gone. The City Series is basically defunct. Mike Hummer, for his part, has been away from local high school football fields for more than 30 years.
Yet the 1979 Harbor graduate, who serves as an assistant coach at Napoleon High School, can’t help but tell stories of his days as a Mariner. Those tales consistently leave his players in awe.
“I share Ashtabula stories with my football kids all the time,” Hummer said. “The biggest thing is we don’t have the advantage of rivalries. I tell them about the City Series all the time. I tell them where I grew up, in my neighborhood, were kids who went to St. John. I went to Mother of Sorrows and played there in junior high. I had an opportunity these kids don’t get here.”
The WIldcats have little idea what real rivalries are, but Hummer likes to tell them of the antics he would get to witness.
“Napoleon only has the one school,” Hummer said. “We don’t have city rivalries. It intrigues the kids. Our bus rides (while I was at Harbor) were 10 or 15 minutes. A long one might have been 20 minutes when we played Conneaut. Here, we go two and a half hours.
“Defiance is supposed to be our rival, but the kids don’t give it a second thought. I tell them about bands marching down the fields, kids throwing eggs from cars as they drove by. I’m like a grandpa telling stories. They get a kick out of it.”
Napoleon may not have a rival, but the team also has a mentality that makes each opponent they face during the season something close.
“The first year we made the playoffs, 1986, we played Elyria Catholic and they were just coming off the Brian Thomas train,” Hummer said. “They were still a powerhouse. Everybody figured we’d get routed and we won, 34-12 or 34-14. Even people today put that game as the landmark win for Napoleon football.
“Every year, we believe we can compete with the big schools We have to compete with the big schools. There was a period we were an independent and we went out and sought teams that were known statewide.”
In many ways, that mentality to take on all comers has made the Wildcat program Hummer has coached in since 1986 into a football power.
“We may not always have won, but we developed the mentality that we can compete with anybody,” Hummer said. “Each year, we still play teams that are supposed to beat us.”
The Wildcats, 48-7 winners over Sylvania Northview on Friday, have enjoyed success so far in 2012. They are 8-0-1 and hold the top spot in the Division III, Region 10 computer ratings. They will play Bowling Green (3-6) this week.
“The last 12 years, we’ve been anywhere from one to four,” Hummer, the secondary coach, said. “We’ve been in the playoffs nine times going back to 1986. We’ve had a good run going back to 1998, then 2002 and on. We’re third in the AP Poll. We’ve never been that high. The kids are very deserving of it.”
The league Hummer is custom-built for a team like Napoleon.
“We’re Division III and the schedule we play, with the exception of Defiance, our rival, we play Division I and II teams,” Hummer said. “Kettering Alter is one of the top Division III teams in the state. That game, we got in about five plays and it was canceled. We play in the Northern Lakes League and if we beat those teams and they take care of each other, we’re sitting pretty good.”
It suits the Wildcats and their coaches just fine that on any given night, they are the little dog in the fight.
“We follow the mindset that we’re a small school,” Hummer said. “We have to have a chip on our shoulder. We play quite a few kids both ways. The other teams might only play a couple.”
Hummer and his fellow coaches do their best to make sure the Wildcats are ready each week for the next big dog to enter the yard.
“We have to preach in the summer to be ready,” Hummer said. “We don’t have many athletes, so we have to be ready to play 48 minutes. The mindset of the kids at Napoleon is they believe they’re a big school, we just don’t have as many athletes. They’ll play anybody.”
One game the Wildcats were ready for was that matchup with Alter. Everything seemed to be going Napoleon’s way, five plays into the game.
The Wildcats had marched down the field, but before they could put points on the board, Mother Nature intervened in the form of a lightning storm.
“Alter was going to be a great game,” Hummer said. “Hopefully, we might get another chance at them down the playoff trail.”
That game getting canceled let Hummer and his cohorts know they may have something special in their team.
“It’s funny,” Hummer said. “It was delayed forever. It was a 7 p.m. kickoff and we didn’t decide to postpone it until 10:30. At about 7:10, we walked off the field. Three hours later, the kids were still chomping at the bit to get back out there. It wasn’t raining, but there was lightning all through the area.
“We had to try and get the kids to settle down and relax, but they wanted to play. They were upset. We were talking on the bus and from that point on, we knew we had a good team. That showed their mentality. We have good kids. We’re going to make a run. It was a good scene. The kids were mad they didn’t get to finish it.”
Losing the game didn’t hurt them in the computer ratings, either.
“What the state did was take all of our wins and all of their wins and divided them in half,” Hummer said. “Every time they win, we get a half a point and every we win, they get a half a point. They’re 7-0-1, also. It works out for both schools. We’re in Region 10, but if we were in Division I, Region I, we’d be fifth based on points. It definitely didn’t hurt us.”
After the battles on Friday nights, Hummer takes time out to enjoy watching the team his sons coach for.
“My son, Brian, played at Kent State (6-1, 4-0 in the MAC after its 41-24 win against visiting Western Michigan on Saturday to become bowl eligible) for five years,” Hummer said. “He’s a defensive quality control assistant. My youngest, Brandon, is at Kent State. He went to Notre Dame in Cleveland and played two years there. He’s in the strength department. The two boys went the college (coaching) route.”
Watching the success of his sons’ team is good for Hummer.
“They’re having a great year,” Hummer said. “Darrell Hazell came in last year. Brian wished he wasn’t a fifth-year senior. He wanted one more year. (Hazell’s) doing great things.
“It was just a matter of time (in that first year) before things started clicking. It happened about mid-year. The last 12 games, they’ve won 10 of the 12. It’s neat to have two kids involved in the program. That’s what I do with my Saturdays. I follow them everywhere.”
Ettinger is a freelance writer from Ashtabula.
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