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Chuck Martinez-Brandon column - Heart of a Tiger: Holgate earns a paycheck by never giving up

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The Holgate Tigers finally got their paycheck last Friday.

There may not have been a harder job anywhere around northwest Ohio than the one that first-year head coach James Wagner and his Tigers undertook heading into the season.

It had been since the third week of the 2007 season since the Tigers last brought home a victory (a 28-0 victory over Cardinal Stritch). And following an 0-10 season in 2008, the Tigers opened the 2009 campaign with three more losses. But last week the Tigers gave themselves and their Parent's Night crowd what they'd been working for for a long time ... a win.

And not just any win, a 21-12 win against neighboring Ayersville.

In fact, before Friday's game the Tigers had bested the Pilots only two times before with the last triumph coming in 2003.

If there are two schools that the Tigers love to beat, one is west-side neighbor Ayersville, the other is their Henry County neighbor to the east.

And as the final seconds ticked off the clock against the Pilots, the realization of what they'd just accomplished washed over the faces of all the Tigers' players.

Now mind you, that's not a lot of faces.

A year ago the Tigers' numbers were so low they wondered if they were even going to make it through the year. This season the Tigers' numbers have grown, but they still only number in the mid-20s.

And after suffering seven straight losses in 2007 and 10 more in 2008, many were wondering if this was the beginning of the end for the Holgate program. Those who wondered if this was the end may have never seen what the Tigers did on Friday nights. Yeah, it's easy to pass judgment by just looking at the final tallies in the next day's paper or on the Internet. It's easy to jump on a wagon and kick a program when it's down.

But what the couple of dozen of Tigers have done is believe in themselves and just keep working on improving.

And what you can't see in the final summary is heart.

Week in and week out for the past two seasons, the Tigers have played with more heart than schools that were playoff bound.

And as the losses mounted, the Tigers never gave up or backed down. Every week they may have been out-manned and out-skilled, but no one ever beat them because of a lack of heart.

As we walked through the line after the game, I made sure to tell a few of their players that.

This win, they definitely earned. For sticking it out, for staying together, for believing in themselves.

For two years any talk about the Tigers was negative. Now, they've earned a paycheck and hopefully its the start of a Tiger trend.