By Terry Boehmker
NKyTribune sports reporter
Chad Montgomery went into his first practice session as Bellevue’s head football coach on Monday fully aware of the program’s recent hardships. The Tigers have not had a winning season since 2014 and last year’s team finished 0-9 after forfeiting its last two games due to a shortage of players caused by injuries.
“They’ve had a lot of rough patches over the last few years,” Montgomery said of the returning players. “We’re just trying to keep them positive and let them know it’s not going to change overnight. It’s going to take hard work and they’ve got to put the effort in.”
Montgomery said 21 players attended Monday’s practice and four others were on vacation. He expects three more to come out by the end of the week. That would give him a total of 28, nine above the number on last year’s roster.
Some of the nine seniors who signed up for the team did not play football the last two seasons and decided to come back, according to the optimistic coach.
“I think we’ll be OK,” Montgomery said. “We’ve got a very committed group of kids. The nice thing is we have about 10 sophomores who got a lot of playing time last year. That’s the group we really want to focus on and get through our system. By the time they’re seniors, they should be ready to roll.”
Like many small towns, high school football is a vital part of the Bellevue community.
When last year’s team had to forfeit its last two games, police officers and city officials didn’t want the season to end so abruptly. A flag football game was organized between the team and members of the community to give the season a proper send-off.
School pride is the reason Montgomery took on the head coaching job. He’s a former Bellevue player who wants to get the program back on a winning track. He said three of his assistant coaches are also former Tigers and they feel the same way.
“I was out of coaching all together and enjoying being a dad,” Montgomery said. “The opportunity just came along and Bellevue being my alma mater I wanted to do everything I can to help fix things.”
Montgomery’s previous head coaching job was at Dayton, his alma mater’s long-time rival. He compiled a 13-73 record in eight seasons with the Greendevils before resigning in 2018.
He’d like to improve his career record while he’s at Bellevue and restore the winning culture the Tigers had when he was a starting running back on the 1999 and 2000 teams that finished with 12-1 and 11-2 records.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Montgomery said. “They only won three games in the last four years so we have some work to do, but we’ll do what we can to get it figured out.”
This season, Bellevue will be in a new Class 1A district with Dayton, Newport and Newport Central Catholic. The Tigers will play all three of their district opponents in October so that gives the new coaching staff plenty of time to mold their young team.