It was the Monday before the Shepherd High School homecoming game when the head football coach, Owen Russell, first became aware that their opponent was unsure if they had a team for the following Friday. The news quickly spread to some of the team captains.
“We got told on Monday of the week, obviously not that they were for sure canceling yet,” team captain Easton VanAlstine said. “We got wind about how there’s a chance that they were going to cancel and we had to start thinking and preparing for that early on.”
Russell spent the following days working with the athletic director, searching for another team for Shepherd to play against, but to no avail. Still, Shepherd held out hope that Standish-Sterling would still be able to play.
“We didn’t officially find out until at practice on Wednesday,” Russell said. “I brought the team over and we told them then. You could kind of see the light go out of their eyes a little bit.”
“I think most of us were pretty kind of hopeful, you know, that it wasn’t going to happen,” team captain Wesley Cluley said. “We were all out at practice, you know, and we saw the AD walk up and everyone kind of understood like, what was happening.”
“I was pretty, like, distraught,” senior Mason Eisenberger said. “I kind of thought they’d pull up JV players to play on Friday.”
“We haven’t won a homecoming game as a group,” senior Noah Clevenger said. “This was our first real chance to actually win a homecoming game for our high school.”
“It was kind of devastating, you know?” Russell said. “Homecoming is a kind of special time around here with the parade, and all the homecoming festivities in the school, the court, the band, the cheerleaders and everybody are all a part of it. It’s a community-based thing and to have a community event just be snatched away is, like I said earlier, devastating.”
A meeting with all of the senior football players and the student council had been held during lunchtime that Wednesday to discuss the team’s options if the other team ended up pulling out. VanAlstine suggested moving the Junior Varsity game to Friday, and another student suggested a meet-and-greet with the football players on the field.
The team had played a similar game the year before, playing a walkthrough game with the team’s dads and role models at a practice. It was suggested that they do something similar for the homecoming game, using flag football rules.
“That one just seemed like a lightbulb came on, and it kind of clicked,” Russell said. “That could be a lot of fun.”
Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026 the Shepherd High School athletics Facebook page put out a post explaining the situation and what they had planned to do. It was flooded with comments, likes and shares from the community, and the volunteers started pouring in.
“We put out a Facebook post saying ‘if there’s any dads interested please email me so I can get a list of how many we got,’” Russell said. “I got like 20 emails so I was like alright, we can do this, and then Friday right before the game we had 30. 30 plus dads, mentors and role models.”
“I think it was Thursday, probably, maybe early afternoon I started getting texts from one of the dads saying that this whole thing is going to happen,” Mark Clevenger, a father who played in the game said. “And he wanted to see if we could get together to have a practice the night before.”
The evening of the game, the attitude in the locker room was very different from before a normal game. VanAlstine described the energy as being more playful, the team joking around and having fun before the game.
“We were so excited, obviously,” Noah Clevenger said. “Like, it wasn’t the same, but we were so excited to be able to play against our dads.”
Soon enough, the teams took the field.
“The place was packed,” said Russell. “There was standing room only in our home side bleachers, there were people in the away side bleachers, there were people along the fence. That’s probably the most full I’ve seen the stadium in a long, long time.”
“I just remember walking out and like looking up and being like, oh my gosh, like, everybody’s here,” said Cluley. “Literally everyone showed up.”
The game ended with a score of 32-28, with the Varsity team beating their dads and role models by four points. In the end, despite the hiccups and uncertainties, the homecoming game went off without a hitch and the team was not only celebrated by the school, but by the entire Shepherd community.
“For the homecoming football game, it is your senior homecoming but it’s also just another football game,” said VanAlstine. “What we experienced, not a lot of other schools ever will experience that and I thought it was pretty unique that we ended up doing our homecoming like that, so I thought it was pretty memorable.”
