NEW PALESTINE — One thing from their past ties almost the entire 2018 New Palestine football state championship team together.
When the Dragons hoisted the Class 5A state championship trophy in November, it was the pinnacle of something so many of them started together many years ago. Out of the entire group of state champions, 87 percent of the roster grew up playing in the New Palestine Cadet Football League.
On Saturday night, the past, present and future of New Palestine football gathered together for what athletics director Al Cooper called “a legendary and historic night in New Palestine High School football history,” as the high school held the first-ever NPCFL Dinner and Silent Auction to raise money for the youth football league.
The event featured three main speakers of high importance to the New Palestine football program. Matt Canada, a former Dragons quarterback in the late 1980s who has gone on to have a successful coaching career, including as head coach at Maryland in 2018, kicked things off. Todd Yoder, a 1996 New Palestine graduate who had a 10-year NFL career and won a Super Bowl, spoke next. Kyle Ralph, the Dragons current head football coach, capped things off.
All three spoke about the importance of football and how vital the NPCFL is to the community.
“That’s why we’re having a dinner tonight, to make sure any kid that wants to play football in New Palestine gets to do it,” Canada said. “Anybody that questions the importance of this league isn’t paying attention. If you go back and look at when this league started, and the success that has happened, it very much correlates. Those guys are learning how to play football.”
The event was the idea of a new member to the NPCFL board, Tom Hurst, who joined the board this year and proposed the idea in January. Without a lot of time to plan or advertise, the event proved to be a success.
Between 250 and 300 tickets were sold, and the silent auction raised $21,200.
“It’s tough to fundraise. Everyone is fundraising,” NPCFL President David McDaniel said. “We thought if this gives us a nice shot in the arm as far as bringing in some money that we haven’t been able to in past, it would really free us up to continue to buy new helmets, and shoulder pads, and coaching equipment and improve our facilities and so forth. That was the premise behind it, and Tom knocked it out of the park. For our first event, being a youth-level fundraiser, it has far exceeded our expectations.”
Along with the speakers, current and former New Palestine football players were in attendance. Several members of the 2018 championship team were there.
Maybe more importantly, some potential future Dragons were in the audience, wearing their New Palestine jerseys.
“I love watching what you guys have done with this program, what Coach Ralph has done. I want to cheer you guys on,” Yoder said during his speech. “You guys are the next generation that’s going to keep NP football going. The other kids that are in this room, because you are playing in the youth league, you’re the guys that are going to be handed the torch.”
None of it would have been possible without the man who started it all, Marvin Shepler. Shepler was slated to be one of four speakers but declined to give a full speech, although he did take the microphone at the end for a few brief minutes.
He started the football program at New Palestine in 1968. And while it took a while, he eventually was able to get the youth football league going in 2000.
“We wanted this league for a long time,” Shepler said. “I can say that we, for probably 30 or 40 years, tried to get this thing going. We had a lot of obstacles, but we got it straightened out.”
In the final main speech of the night, Ralph echoed many of the thoughts shared by Canada and Yoder, talking about the impact of the NPCFL and the sport of football.
He also spoke of how important the youth football league was to him in deciding to pursue and ultimately take the job at New Palestine in 2013. He was impressed by how well organized and developed the youth league was compared to what he was used to in Cincinnati, where he went to high school and was coaching before moving to Indiana.
“One of things that really attracted me to this job to begin with was the NPCFL, to be quite honest. They had a website, they had highlights, they had all these different things,” he said. “Cincinnati is known for being a huge football town, but there aren’t a lot of things like that there. Youth programs are not strong, not well-established, not well-run. This league, in my opinion, is just second to none.”
The road to success for the New Palestine football program starts, for the most part, in the NPCFL, and Saturday’s event will be another step in keeping the organization moving forward.
“The success has to start on our fields here, with our coaches here, with our parents here, with our kids here,” McDaniel said. “If we instill that there, then we can make anything happen, just like Coach Ralph has with the varsity program.”