Irene Washed Out First Weekend of Football

The problems from Tropical Storm Irene wiped out almost all of the scheduled games from the first weekend of play in the Anne Arundel County youth football league.

Only three games did get played, according to Recreation and Parks officials on Monday morning, and two of them did involve Crofton teams. But the scores hadn’t been reported as yet on Monday.

Rec and Parks officials confirmed Monday that the postponed games will be moved back to the final week of the season.

Football league officials were still working on the actual schedule late last week and then again into early this week, and this event makes things even tougher.

Therefore, whatever was finished last week would need to be modified once more, and league officials will be taking care of that. Teams are scheduled to play 9-10 games per year, and the regular season was scheduled to end Oct. 22 with the playoffs beginning the following week. That could be affected in some form.

Ron Rosati is going to coach a 12-and-under team with Crofton this season after winning the Anne Arundel Youth Football Association Division II championship last fall with an 11-and-under team.

Rosati’s 2011 team suffered a tough loss in a pre-season scrimmage two weeks ago. They dropped a 12-8 decision to Old Mill. But the two teams will meet again in what’s now the season opener on Sept. 3 at Old Mill.

The coach said that they’ve expanded from 19 players to 23 and all but three players are back from the 2010 title team, but Rosati said he likes how everything is coming together.

“This team is slowly becoming one big family instead of 23 individuals,” Rosati said in a recent e-mail.

Rosati said his team is in a tough division with a tough schedule to match. But they do have some key returning starters like quarterback Joe Bradley, running back Tim Valentine and offensive lineman William Ruppard leading the offense and Donte Thompson, Jordan Windsor and Chris Schiedhauer pushing the defense.