Football and Fortitude

Sometimes, you hear a story for the first time and it seems like it isn't important, but then you investigate a little and it becomes inspiring and profound. That is what happened when I was looking at a team from a tiny school in a corner of the Upper Peninsula, Carney-Nadeau.

Coming from a Portland perspective, we are incredibly blessed. High quality football has been the norm here for decades, with both Portland High School, and Portland St. Patrick experiencing various levels of success, all the way to State Championships, for the past 75 years. Portland High has had teams since at least 1950, and St. Patrick had its first season in 1951, and both programs have had football every season since then. Both teams have also had plenty of players to compete, although at times they have struggled, at least they could almost always expect to win a game or two. The other way we have been blessed is in our distance to opponents. The significant majority of our opponents are local, and our drive times are usually under an hour.

I first heard about Carney-Nadeau on an 8-man football forum, and the discussion was surrounding teams that forfeit. The unfortunate reality in 8-man football is that so many teams have low participation numbers, and forfeits become commonplace when injuries or illnesses occur. Often these forfeits are for player safety reasons, but sometimes they are due to that team being unable to compete and the coaches and administrations deciding to forfeit rather than get beaten badly. This article isn't to judge teams for forfeiting, rather, it is to recognize and appreciate when a team refuses to quit.

Carney-Nadeau is a small school district, that has around 74 students this year. They coop with another small school, Nah Tah Wahsh Public School Academy, also known as the Hannahville Indian School. The Wolves had their first season in 1953, but have since fielded only 23 teams total in those years. Football was missing from 1974 to 2016, when the Wolves were able to field an 8-man team and compete again. They fund raised, and apparently the Green Bay Packers helped with the uniforms to get the program off the ground. This school doesn't have a its own football field, and so they rent a field at another town to have games. Since 2016, they have went 11-57, and they even made the playoffs in 2020 when COVID shortened the season. This season, a stalwart group of 11 young men embarked on a journey to have a complete season. Unfortunately, scheduling challenges meant that they had to have 7 away games, and the drive times to find a full schedule was extreme to say the least. The average trip for an away game is 2 hours and 6 minutes, from their small corner in the far Southwest of the Upper Peninsula. Four of their games were 3 hours away! The Wolves have not expected to compete much, and through the first 8 weeks, had been beaten by dramatic scores, with the point total being 591-12. Despite that, Carney-Nadeau showed up every week, even knowing that they would be beaten by incredible scores. Coming into the final game, the mighty Wolves made the long trip over to Rapid River. A great victory was had, even though they lost the game 70-6, the team showed true Fortitude and finished their perfect season by competing in all 9 games. Congratulations to Carney Nadeau.