A school needs a lot of things to re-launch a football program, everything from enough players to field a team to helmets to a schedule.
When it came time for Horizon Christian to bring back its football program last fall for the first time in nearly a decade, school officials found all of those pieces for the program, and found something else that really helped fuel the whole operation: enthusiasm.
Whether it was school officials working to bring back the program, students eager to play football for their own school, or community members looking to sit under the Friday night lights, everyone was excited about the prospect for football at Horizon.
“Everybody wanted it back,” said Scott Olson, head of the school at Horizon. “Football is part of our DNA. George Crace was our first principal and our first football coach. We lost our identity for a few years. We could tell the community was excited when we brought football back. We had probably 500 people tailgating in the parking lots before games last season.”
Last fall, Horizon fielded a football team for the first time since 2018, something that had been in the works since 2022. That’s when school officials started discussing a plan to bring football back, but things didn’t really kick into high gear until 2025.
Olson said the key to any great program is its leader, and the Horizon program’s return really took shape when the school hired Keith Bennett to be its head coach. Bennett worked at Horizon for five seasons from 2011 to 2015 as its defensive coordinator.
With numbers in the program dwindling, the writing was on the wall for football at Horizon, and Bennett left with other coaches. He coached at Amity, North Marion, and Ida B. Wells, where he took a program with 27 kids to more than 300 before leaving to return to Horizon.
“I would have stayed at Horizon for as long as they would have me,” Bennett said. “It’s an amazing place. They put faith first, and we always like to say faith and family come before football in the dictionary. That’s what we build our program off of. The whole administration is behind us.”
With a coach in place, all the program needed then was actual players. Bennett and Olson weren’t sure they’d be able to get a team and schedule in place for last season. They spoke about the possibility of just having a season of practice and getting everyone used to having a football team again, but not playing games.
However, they put out feelers about playing, and Bennett said he’d go to the school during lunch to throw balls around.
“We started with about five or six kids, and then it grew to about eight or nine, and then 14 or 15,” Bennett said. “We realized that there were some pretty good athletes. Not a lot of experience, but some pretty good athletes, and so right then and there, we knew we could actually play kind of a season this year.”
Eventually,, the team had 31 players and an independent schedule,, playing some tough JV teams from larger schools in the area.
Even with limited experience and smaller team numbers, the players took to the team immediately, according to Hunter Woody, one of the players who joined early.
“It was a community,” he said. “All the guys who came out here were all just guys who loved the sport. Under Coach Bennett, he just brought us all together. His whole thing is one heart, and I think this team truly represents that.”
Blake Jones, another player from last year, said it was fun to be out on the field with friends, both old and new.
“There are people that you haven’t really talked to before, and then you get on the football field, and you’re a brotherhood,” he said. “You just love each other.”
That extended beyond the field, as well. Grady Soriano said one of his favorite aspects of last season was the team dinners they had in the lead-up to games, where players would have dinner at someone’s house and talk about the upcoming game, but mostly just bond and get to know each other.
Even the players themselves weren’t totally sure how the season was going to go. Kingston Andersen said some of his friends not on the team didn’t even realize it was a real team until they suited up and played a game.
Andersen said it didn’t take long for him to realize how much fun it was going to be playing high school football.
“My adrenaline gets going, and I just feel the pulse of the stadium,” he said. “The pressure, it’s great.”
Giving the kids the chance to play in front of their family, friends, and neighbors was also a big reason the school wanted to bring back football.
“The first conversation I had with the kids was telling them they haven’t experienced anything until they’ve experienced a Friday night like that,” Bennett said. “I went to the middle school to talk to those kids about football, and I brought some of our players and asked them what the most fun part of playing was. To a man, they said Friday nights. Friday nights were by far the most fun thing that we did.”
Olson said the turnout at games last year was bigger than anticipated.
“People were thrilled,” he said. “The games were very well attended, especially night games under the lights. It’s gone as well as we hoped, maybe even a little better. We didn’t even think we were going to be playing games last year, and now we get to build off that momentum from last year.”
