Monroe aims for division ‘five-peat’ despite roster turnover

Published 6:45 pm Wednesday, September 3, 2025

MONROE — After a Saturday afternoon padless practice, Scott Darrow called his team to the center of the field.

“Hats off, take a knee,” Darrow said, prompting the players to sink to the ground almost in unison.

The Monroe football team played in a preseason jamboree the previous night, meaning the Bearcats were officially less than a week away from their first game of the season: a non-conference matchup with Bishop Blanchet at home on Friday.

Darrow had been waiting months for this.

“Us coaches, we all kind of crave this,” Darrow said to his players kneeling in front of him. “We crave game week.”

After last year, why wouldn’t they? The Bearcats finished atop Wesco South 3A for the fourth consecutive season, posting a 7-0 division record (9-2 overall). The key contributors looking to make it five straight this fall will largely be different than last season. Only three starters between both sides of the ball are back on the roster.

The significant turnover is nothing new. Darrow estimates the team has graduated anywhere between 27-36 seniors in each of the past three seasons. Each time, the program has maintained consistent winning results.

“This is kind of what we do here,” Darrow told The Herald. “We’ve been fortunate to be successful, and I think part of that is, you know, we’ve had kind of a run of good senior classes come through, and we haven’t had a lot of guys playing as sophomores, or juniors even.”

The 2025 season will be a little different in that last respect; with just nine seniors on the roster, there will be more opportunities for younger players to earn playing time. This Bearcats team will perhaps be the most tested in the past five years of the program, but the belief has never wavered.

Darrow witnessed that foundation build from the ground up. When he first joined the coaching staff over 20 years ago, the Bearcats would take the field each week merely hoping to win. It took five seasons to shift away from that, and now entering Darrow’s sixth season as head coach, winning is the expectation.

In the eyes of senior offensive/defensive lineman Micah Moore, optimism is a major tenet of the program’s foundation.

“Just keeping the positivity around,” Moore said. “And a lot of people are going to be like, ‘Oh we’re not going to be as good because we had a big senior class just leave.’ I’ve witnessed, I got to start with two senior classes, and the rotation happens, but we always end up moving past it.

“We’re our own team. These guys are their own players. They’re not playing under a shadow anymore.”

Part of the padless practice last Saturday involved working on extra points. With the special teams unit on the field, the coaches called for a couple of players standing on the sideline to help retrieve the balls kicked behind the end zone.

Chris Britt was the first to volunteer. With no other context, one may assume Britt was a freshman reserve player just looking to chip in wherever he could. That would be incorrect. Britt, a junior, is Monroe’s starting quarterback.

“I think it just shows that we’re all committed, and nobody thinks that they’re better than everybody else,” senior wide receiver/safety Jacob Jutte said. “We realize that this is a team sport, and not one person is gonna win it all.”

Britt is entering his first season as the starter, so he spent the summer focusing on staying calm in the pocket and improving his reads. Darrow could see that work pay off during the jamboree against Cedarcrest and Hazen the previous night.

Like any quarterback, Britt’s performance will be a determining factor for the outcome of Monroe’s season, but he has confidence that his fellow skill positions will carry their weight in the offense, and then some.

“We got a lot of playmakers at receiver and running back,” Britt said. “So I feel like it’s going to be really exciting throwing the ball to them and watching them make plays.”

Jutte and senior running back/defensive back Myron Robinson will each play significant roles in the offense alongside Britt. In addition to leading the team on the field, the two are excited to help their teammates become comfortable in their new roles.

“Just good chemistry,” Robinson said. “I feel like we have a pretty good group of upper classmen that are willing to upbring the lower classmen, especially if they mess up or do something wrong, so I feel like that’s a pretty big part of (our continued success).”

As much as they believe in their culture and leadership, nothing replicates the experience of game action on a Friday night. For the new starters, getting accustomed to that environment will be the biggest challenge, and one that must be mastered quickly.

“Friday is just a different animal,” Darrow said. “I think it’s just having confidence in what you’re doing, and all that stuff. It’s one thing to do it at sub-varsity, one thing to do it in practice, but just that experience on Friday is gonna be hard to replace (on the roster). But we have a talented team, we’re just young.

“We didn’t start a lot of juniors last year because we had so many seniors, but now it’s their turn, and we’ve been here before as a program. We believe in what we do, and we just gotta sharpen it up and we’ll get better every week, and that’s the goal, man.”