Harvest Prep's Eagles have landed

While less investments are working out, Harvest Prep has one that's paying dividends. The Eagles are playing their inaugural season of 8-man football and three weeks into the season have picked up their first win, a 22-6 victory over Glendale Prep to even their record at 1-1.

It was a stark turnaround for a program that lost its first game in a 62-8 romp at the hands of Phoenix-Apache Trail. Harvest Prep coach Ken Blankenship explained that the loss wasn't a setback for the program, but it may have prematurely affected his outlook for the season.

“It wasn’t tough keeping the morale up after (the loss to Apache),” Blankenship said. “The boys knew going in what our expectations were, and that was to get 100 percent effort. Obviously we want to win, but at the same time we have to be realistic in our goals and our goals are not for this season, our goals are long term so we’re in the building process. We know we’re going to take our lumps this year and maybe even next year."

The turnaround process was much quicker than Blankenship had anticipated. Harvest Prep beat Glendale Prep two weeks after the loss to Apache Trail. The Eagles' Brian Vasquez finished with three touchdowns, including an interception which was run back for a score.

"I know this was our first win," Vasquez said. "I was glad I was the one who helped our team to get it."

Vasquez, like most of Blankenship's 17-man roster, had never played organized football prior to joining the high school squad.

"That’s kind of the testament to this program," Blankenship said. "We’ve got a lot of tough kids, they’re just inexperienced. If we go out there and we’re able to say ‘Line up on this guy and hit this guy as hard as you can,’ we’re probably going to win a lot of games, but that’s not how it is."

A minor complaint for a program in its fourth week of existence.

The Eagles are playing their inaugural season in the Charter Athletic Association as a 1A school after missing deadline for AIA registration. Blankenship explained that given the other hurdles for the program, it was a minimal setback.

“When I went in, we didn’t have a budget we didn’t have anything,” Blankenship said. “Basically they came up to me and said, ‘Coach, we need to put together a football program. What can you do?’”

Blankenship, the owner and coach of the now-defunct Yuma Blitz, was approached by Harvest Prep's administrator Mario Ybarra because of his time with the semipro organization.

“I had experience starting something from scratch and that’s what he wanted,” Blankenship said.

But as the economy soured, Ybarra and Blankenship’s determination to see a football program at Harvest never did. Blankenship said that Harvest had money set aside for the upstart program and the rest was raised through continuous donations and fundraisers.

Ybarra said that contributions to the school's athletic programs have remained generous even during difficult times.

“I saw that maybe the donations may have been better several years ago,” Ybarra said. “When it comes to kids and it comes to students, as far as donations and getting behinds students and sports, (the support) was there.”

Harvest also plans on fielding soccer, boys and girls basketball and softball teams.

With all the new athletic programs, questions have arose as to what type of financial burden has been placed on Harvest. “It hasn't been much of a burden at all because of the incentives we have from the community,” Ybarra said. “We have some fundraising measures we put in place, a booster club in place, the kids have raised quite a bit of money to start the budget, it was really interesting to see because I told the students and the coaches that if we were going to start a program like this we were going to need a budget.”

After the financial hurdle was cleared, the season began and quickly found itself on the winning track. Blankenship still expects his team to have growing pains, a side-effect of a roster comprised mainly of freshman and sophomores, but admits the program is further along than he envisioned.

Though the inaugural season is only in its third week, Blankenship already is looking toward the future. "We’d love to play 11-man (next season), but we only have 162 kids at the high school level," Blankenship said. "We may go 8-man one more year, it depends on our numbers."

If the team can continue to win, Blankenship said, he expects his team's numbers to rise. The true test for the Eagles will come today when they play their first home game against Heritage Academy at Ray Croc Sports Complex with kickoff scheduled for 7 p.m.

But for the players already on the team, especially those who had never played, the program has had an extraordinary impact. "I thought joining the team would be a great experience, I found out that it was," Vasquez said. "I love football now."