Fans cheering and burgers on the grill. It’s the atmosphere at a Crane football game on a Thursday night. Crane and football: those two words have not gone together since the late 1940s.
“Football at Crane has always been a dream of everybody’s for probably at least 25 years,” said Crane youth football coach Cody Cypret. “I’m a graduate from Crane and even then we always had talk about having football at Crane.”
The Pirate community wanted to charter a course of revival, starting with a junior high team.
“It’s kind of a unique situation where the Crane youth sports are funding this 100 percent,” said Crane Athletic Director Mike Morelock.
“[We] took it upon ourselves to raise up the funding and we have had a lot of support through the community,” Cypret said.
A varsity 11-man program is where X marks the spot, but it will take a few years and more funding before Crane reaches that point.
“You’ve got to have those numbers in the mighty mites program and then each year sustain those numbers,” Morelock said. “Now we have moved into the junior high, so the plan is to have it for two years and sustain those numbers. If everything goes to plan then we move to junior varsity and it kind of progresses through.”
A Pirates JV program is anticipated to pickup next fall along with the anticipation of a newly built high school football field. Crane will resort to an away-only schedule if need be.
The Crane football program walked the plank over 75 years ago. Now, the community is rallying for it’s immergence, which is just on the horizon.
