Cedar Ridge football building foundation for future

The Cedar Ridge varsity football team is back on the field this year after forcing to miss last season due to a lack of players.

The level of dedication on the Cedar Ridge football team goes beyond winning and losing.

"They want to be great," said Coach Torrean Hinton. "They do the right things. As a coach you have those teams where you have little pockets of problems. I don't have that here.They work extremely hard, they're committed."

So committed that the upperclassmen on the team stuck around even when there was no varsity team last year.

"They live and die the Cedar Ridge football program so therefore we had guys that stuck to it -- we have a lot of sophomores," Hinton said. "We have people that are just dedicated to the program."

"All the adversity that we've been through can make us tougher as a team," said Braedon Thompson, a senior linebacker.

The Fighting Red Wolves had just 32 players last year and were forced to play a JV schedule. This year with the help of word of mouth and encouragement, the team is up to 40 athletes from freshman to seniors making up one varsity squad.

The kicker will be playing on both the football and soccer team this fall.

"It's definitely different from a regular JV and Varsity team but I feel like it's definitely brought all of us kids together," said Thompson.