By Sean Clasby
Contrary to popular belief, high school football games are not won Friday nights. Nor are they won during the week on the practice field. Instead, games are won by the athletes making positive life decisions away from competition.
“Winning is an all the time thing,” said Tom Dyer. Dyer is the current athletic director at Hamden High School, but before coming to Hamden he won 2 state championships as the head football coach at Hillhouse High School.
Dyer attributes his success at Hillhouse to his players not using drugs or alcohol. Today he stresses the importance of living above the influence to his current student athletes explaining that it subtracts from their on field performance.
“When you’re training and preparing for games you need to have your body functioning at a high level and drugs, alcohol, tobacco those things kind of pollute your body,” Dyer said. Head football coach Todd Dowty agrees and says he has seen drugs and alcohol lead star athletes down the wrong path.
“I was a college athlete. I played football in college and I can tell you firsthand accounts of college athletes that were good athletes, starting positions on the team and have that all go away loose scholarships, get thrown out of school because of drug alcohol use, because of drug use,” said Coach Dowty.
The Hamden High School Athletic Department as a whole does not want to see their student-athletes fall through the cracks. They hope the life lessons learned through high school athletics do not lose their value after graduation.
Dyer says, “We are teaching kids how to be successful in life and drugs, alcohol, and tobacco can’t be a part of it.”
