BERNE — “I think the last time they played an official high school football game in Berne, they were still wearing leather helmets.”

Amie Burnside’s comment  reflects the frustration of all who have been yearning to  see an official BKW varsity team take the field once again.  Year after year — ever since 1951 when the last school-sponsored team took the field ( a little later than the leather-helmets era) — Hilltown fans have gone team-less,  or have had  to settle for teams funded by the community, not by the school district.

Their long wait is now officially over.

Burnside — a football-loving Westerlo councilwoman and mother of Trevor, a football-loving son — will be among the  fans  cheering on Helderberg Valley when it plays its first-ever game against Whitehall High School on the afternoon of Sept. 3 at Berne-Knox Westerlo High School. Trevor will be among those on the field.

Helderberg Valley is  a duplex team, a union between two high schools who are traditional rivals in other sports. They have teamed up  to make fielding a school-financed football team an affordable possibility for both. And to recruit enough players to field a strong squad.

‘For a couple of months we’re family,”  says Gary Morin who is coaching the two-school team. “But we’ll get back to the rivalry after the football season is over.”

It’s not the first local football alliance.  Schoharie, Duanesburg, and the Hilltowns  have all been involved in several multi-community efforts to organize and field a football team.

Schoburg Football played a full schedule last year, and won once.

What’s different this year is the official nature of the team, with school support and money behind it.  The Schoharie board decided not to participate but the player turnout from BKW and Duanesburg —  and the money from both districts  — have proven to be enough to form a squad and get back in the game.

BKW Superintendent Timothy Mundell — himself a former Ballston Spa high school player and  coach of high school teams on Long Island — and Christine Crowley, his counterpart in the Duanesburg school district, persuaded their boards of education to subsidize the joint team.

Mundell says the success of last year’s BKW modified football program for seventh and eighth grades— the team was undefeated — augurs well for the new varsity program.

A two-year agreement between the two school districts calls for each to contribute $25,000 to the Helderberg Valley team budget this year.

“A lot of that, “ says Mundell, “ is going to the cost of equipment,” much of its purchased from the Schoburg booster club. He expects the cost to be less for the second year of the program.

Goals posts are being brought over from Duanesburg.  The BKW field is ready. The Hilltowns booster club, led by Dennis Barber, a Knox councilman, is ready to boost. So is the club in Duanesburg.

Eager to learn

The players are not quite ready, but they’re getting there under  Morin’s tutelage.

Morin says neither school, on its own,  could have recruited the squad that he began shaping and training in mid-August.  “Fewer kids go out for football these days,” he says.

Several years ago, the state authorized district’s  to combine teams to  increase participation numbers.   And Morin says the solution  is becoming increasingly common across the state.

Morin, 35,  is a mathematics teacher at BKW,  a former player and coach for the semi-pro Amsterdam Zephyrs and a former player for the Glove City Colonials.  He says there’s about an equal number of BKW and Duanesburg players on the new team.

“They’re unbelievably eager to learn,” he says of his newborn team, “and a lot of fun to coach.”

On a recent hot late-summer afternoon in Shafer Park in Duanesburg, Morin put them through drill after drill for over three hours. They did not wilt.

Wearing Schoburg jerseys inherited from their predecessor team, the boys from rival schools united around a common purpose.

“Our ultimate goal,” says Morin, “is to have sectional playoffs football in this area.”

He acknowledges that  may not happen this first year, but he also says,  “We’ll play anybody, we’re ready to play ball.”

Like Schoburg Football, Helderberg Valley will play in group D of Section II, one of eight teams in the group. All but two — Canajoharie and Rensselaer — are clustered north of the Capital District in Washington County —  in Cambridge, Whitehall, Fort Edward, and Salem.

Morin, who is in his ninth year of teaching  at BKW, says, “Ever since I got there, I knew  varsity football would be great for the community, great for the school  but obviously we didn’t have the resources by ourselves being such a small school.”

“The only reason these kids are getting to play is the format we’re under,” Morin says, referring to the two-district support.

A name that works for both

“We decided let’s go with the name Helderberg Valley because that encompasses the entire community,” Morin says.  Helderberg Valley has been and still  is the name of the Hilltowns booster club.

Morin says he has a photo of a 1946 Hilltowns team that’s “really funny, shorts up to here.”

Once the current Duanesburg capital project is completed, Morin said, it’s likely home games will be played on the new field there, or split between that field and the BKW field. That has yet to be determined, he says.  But this year all home games will be played at BKW.

Morin is a realist. He says, “One of our biggest challenges so far is we play a lot of schools with programs that have been in existence for a while...We have a lot of kids who are just hopping on, just learning the game.”

He also says the team could use seven or eight more kids for more depth, and maybe a few bigger kids for the front line. But he says the two dozen kids who are so far on the roster “are chomping at the bit.”

“Our job is to coach them up, they’re pretty raw,” he acknowledges. His assistant coaches are Nic Bacon, a earth sciences teacher at Duanesburg; Chris Slinn, a special-education teacher at BKW, and A.J. Sinato, a community volunteer.

“Football is the ultimate team game,” Morin says, “It requires everyone to be working together.”

Helderberg Valley doesn’t turns kids away and it doesn’t cut kids from the team, he says.

“The really beautiful thing about football is that  it doesn’t matter what kind of  kid you are,” Morin says. “If you’re the cross-country running type of kid 0r a bigger kid that can’t get up and down the soccer field, we have a home for you. If a  kid doesn’t have a body type for soccer, we can make him an all-star lineman.  For almost any kind of kid, we have a job for you on the football field”.

“At the end of the day,” he says, “these are good athletic kids, they’re good football players.”

Grateful for support

Morin says with two schools “splitting the bill” the cost to each is less, but “still it’s not an amount of money to ignore….We’re very grateful and we’re working to make sure they don’t regret any of their decisions.”

At the same time, he says the team is on a budget.

“ We do have budget constraints,” he acknowledges. “We’re not going to show up with all the fancy stuff,  but we will play hard on the field to kind of match who we are right now.”

The team is not cutting corners where it counts.  All the players have received ImPACT testing — Immediate Post-concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing to establish baseline cognitive functioning for comparison in the event of concussive injury.  There will be a trainer at every game, as well as an emergency medical service technician.

Scouting of opposing teams is ongoing. The booster club is ready to go at the refreshment stand. There is evan a website page for the team: www.leaguelineup.com/hvfootball.

The first game and home-opener will pit Helderberg Valley against Whitehall, the Section II champs last year. Two more home games are scheduled for Sept. 17 and 24. All games begin Saturday at 1 p.m. at the BKW field just beyond the soccer field.

In addition to seven regular-season games, there will be at least three post-season games, whether the team makes the playoffs or not.

There may be minimal seating on  portable bleachers at the BKW field but fans are advised to come prepared to sit on the hillside overlooking the field or to bring their own chairs.

Oh yes, what about a mascot to fill in the blank: The Helderberg Valley ____?

The BKW mascot is a bulldog, Duanesburg’s is an eagle.

“There’s no way to combine those two,” says Morin. All suggestions for a non-hybrid mascot are welcomed, he said.