Riverview Sharks Football – Summer Preview

It’s harvest time at Riverview High School. Head coach Bruce Gifford is in his fourth year with the team, and the freshman class he acquired on his promotion to head coach has matured into seniors.

“This group of seniors I have now are my seniors, they started as freshmen when I took over,” Gifford said. “They all understand where I’m coming from.”

This is certainly a pressure year for Gifford and the Sharks following an 0-12 campaign.

“I told the administration when I got here that I needed four years to turn the program around,” Gifford said.

The pressure is largely self-induced, but 2011 will be a proving year for Gifford and his group of seniors.

It has been far from an easy road for the Sharks.

When Spoto High School opened in 2006, it sapped much of the strength of the Riverview football program. “We went from having about 100 guys out, just for varsity, down to about 37 in 2007,” Gifford said.

Since then, the school has gradually beefed up its ranks to where it is now getting close to those same numbers from 2006 and before. According to Gifford, the program has had between 55 and 60 players per day show up at workouts. Gifford predicts those numbers will swell up to 80 when the season starts.

So the pressure continues to rise. Given the four-year proposal set forth by Gifford to the administration, the senior class' maturation and the program's resurrection back to near full-strength would make a winless season in 2011 a failure.

That’s probably not going to happen.

With some newcomers added to the mix and several winnable games on the schedule, the Sharks are due to get back in the win column this season.

“If we can win four or five games this year, we have to look at that as being successful,” Gifford said.

The Sharks have only won five games since Gifford took over in 2008. Five victories this year would be a clear success, and they have a good shot.

While they moved up in class from 5A to 7A, their district remains much the same. is out, and Brandon and East Bay are in. Brandon is another strong team that should battle Newsome for the district title, but East Bay is a bottom-feeder team that Riverview should be able to get a win against.

Games against East Bay on Oct. 6, Leto on Sept. 16, Bloomingdale on Sept. 30, and Steinbrenner on Oct. 14 all appear to be winnable. The second half of their schedule is much more daunting, as the Sharks finish the year versus Brandon, at Newsome, at Durant and at — about as tough a finish to the season as you can get. 

Stay tuned to Bloomingdale Patch for a closer look at the positions on both sides of the ball next week.