The lights will be turned back on Friday nights this fall.

Sedona Red Rock High School Principal Heather Isom announced on Monday, April 28, that the school will resurrect its varsity tackle football program in the fall under the direction of former assistant coach Tony Hauserman. The first spring football practice was scheduled for Monday, May 5.

“[Hauserman] has deep football knowledge [and] has great connections in the community,” Sedona-Oak Creek School District Superintendent Tom Swaninger, Ph.D., said. “We also saw someone that would be able to really connect with our kids, build excitement around the program, build a quality staff and do so with a level of commitment that would get the job done of building a program, not simply maintaining one.”

“The entire coaching staff is excited to get this going again,” Hauserman said. “We come with a lot of football coaching experience and and we’re going to bring that to Sedona Red Rock High School football program, and it’s going to be fun.”

Hauserman said his coaching staff will include former head coach John Bradshaw, who will return as the defensive coordinator and assistant coach; Mason Bradshaw as the linebackers’ coach; Tim Daglow as offensive and defensive line coach; Marshall Hilliard as special teams and defensive backs’ coach; Sean Eicher as conditioning coach; and Bailey Ehrlich as receivers’ and defensive backs’ coach.

The SOCSD Governing Board previously terminated the program on May 5, 2020, due to low participation. The Scorpions had started each of the previous four seasons with an average of 25 players, a number that dropped to fewer than 16 by the end of each season because of injuries, academic ineligibility and departures. Board approval is not required to restart the program.

“I’m very happy that we’re getting the program going again,” Governing Board President Randy Hawley said. “At this point, we have 40 kids that are interested, which is a great start and I’m hoping it will continue to grow.”

Swaninger previously estimated the program would cost between $30,000 and $50,000 to restart and approximately $10,000 annually thereafter. He confirmed that SOCSD is currently placing orders for uniforms and equipment.

The Scorpions will compete in the Arizona Interscholastic Association’s 1A rather than 2A division, which allows for a smaller team size, after being reclassified by the AIA earlier this year following two previous failed applications.

Hauserman moved to Sedona in 2001 and was previously head coach of the school’s junior varsity team and offensive coordinator, and refounded Red Rock Youth Football with John Bradshaw and Scott Gilbert in 2004.

“We built a youth program here in Sedona because our high school was constantly battling with the fact that all their players had largely never played football before, and so they were getting crushed all the time by playing schools [whose] kids were very experienced and it was a difficult climb for our kids,” Hauserman said. “We ran that for several years, and then we got a middle school team going, because we wanted to connect the youth to the high school.”

“It will depend on participation,” Swaninger said of restarting a junior varsity program. “Ideally, we would love to have a JV program and a varsity program. It’s rare for a school our size to really be [able] to support both programs. But that is our goal. To be able to use our middle school program to develop into our JV program to develop and then finally becoming a varsity athlete. That’s our goal.”

Hauserman said he expected starting a team with a majority of players who have never played the game before to be a challenge.

“Whatever kids want to play are largely all going to be novices,” Hauserman said. “They’ve never been tackled, they’ve never blocked, they’ve never got knocked on their butts before. So that’s going to be eye-opening … Some kids get knocked over and they jump up and they’re like, ‘I’m going to do better next time, and I’m going to be the one that delivers the hit,’ and other kids get knocked down … and decide, maybe this game is not for them. And so we just don’t know how kids are going to react yet.”

While Hauserman has worked with youth teams and exchange students, “we haven’t ever really had to do that with an entire team before, so it’s going to be critical that parents and the kids are committed and are going to come to the summer seven-on-seven, the weightlifting programs and spring football,” he said. “That is going to give us an opportunity to get the kids trained in advance of teaching them hitting and contact. Because when we get to that point, we don’t want to also have to teach them how to run pass routes.”

“I would love to see the community get connected to the kids and [SOCSD] so that Friday Night Lights in Sedona is a big deal, and the community comes out and supports the kids and we can make it an exciting high school community football event,” Hauserman said.