D’Arcangelo, Spring-Ford on a mission vs. Wilson
Senior DL learns from mission trip to DR
ROYERSFORD » He spent nearly a week this summer in the Dominican Republic building homes for the less fortunate in the lands outside of Santiago.
Now, senior nose guard Ben D’Arcangelo is still seeing construction, this time with a Spring-Ford football program that is looking to mesh together after a two-week stretch has left the Rams with a 1-1 record and a date with District 3 powerhouse Wilson looming Friday night at 7 p.m.
“We definitely have a lot of room to improve on with regards of knowing our stuff, knowing what we need to do,” D’Arcangelo said. “I think, because we have a young team, we don’t understand the importance of film and making sure we know our stuff. We have the physical ability to do all of this. Mentally is where we’re lacking with the mesh of all these new guys coming together. I think we’ve been able to mesh more, we’ve been
able to have that drive. We just need to have that upbeat tempo that we had in the past.”
D’Arcangelo speaks from experience: the more work the Rams put in, the greater their rewards will be. It’s tried and true and was evident during his stay near the heart of the Dominican Republic with teammate Alex Shirley, who both went on a mission trip with their youth group at Christ Church of the Valley to build homes for those without them. Arduous would be too light of an adjective to describe the work the duo put in. Three days of hand mixing concrete, laying the foundation, raising walls and finishing work were taxing, yet highly rewarding as they got to interact with the culture that surrounded them,
“The work ethic that we had to have down there was immense,” D’Arcangelo said. “Alex and I were viewed as the guys down there. The leaders were like, ‘Hey these guys are the biggest and strongest guys we have there, we have to put them to work.’ We worked 10-hour days, hauling cement, brick, sand, rock. Our leaders would assign us tasks and we would be unsupervised and we’d go out and do it, help out the community around us.
“We were in some really poor areas and it was really fulfilling to see these families be able to have their own home. It really put things into perspective. The more that you put into something is what you’re going to get out of it. You want to work hard for those families and for God, who we were there for. If you want to work hard for them and for God, you can truly accomplish anything.”
*** With Wilson, fresh off a 21-14 loss to Governor Mifflin, coming into Ram Country looking not to fall to 0-2 for the first time since 1993, the Rams’ improvement throughout the last two weeks will be tested. Head coach Chad Brubaker hopes that it starts to shine through in Week 3.
“Our players have not been watching enough film on their own, and we have made that a goal for the week,” he said. “We know that Wilson is going to improve dramatically from Week 1 to Week 2. We’re hoping that we delayed that improvement to this week. We are obviously concerned about No. 28 (running back Iggy Reynoso) and No. 12 (quarterback Connor Uhrig) offensively. We need to pursue to the ball and tackle much better than we have in our first two games. Most importantly, we have to protect the football. We just have to play better in every phase of the game.”
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