A year after they forfeited all but three games in an injury-shortened season, The Tiverton Tigers are back with a full squad and hope to get back to winning football games.

“You can see it in the building,” There’re more players wearing jerseys on game day,” said Coach Gacioch. “There’s an excitement.”

Filling the team’s roster took a lot of effort in the off-season, and Coach Gacioch and his crew targeted incoming freshmen and sophomores, taking trips to the middle school last spring and talking to students during lunch about joining up.

 “The goal was to get as many players as we could,” the coach said. “We kind of kept it as an open conversation. We spoke a lot about Tiverton’s football tradition and we enticed them a bit with some stickers, sweatshirt and T-shirts.”

Though the Tigers are now extremely young with 12 freshmen, 16 sophomores, six juniors and five seniors, they are looking forward to the season and are ready to compete, he said

 “We knew it would be another collection of kids that probably haven't played much football at all,” he said. “So, we're just going week by week, hopefully we can learn, hopefully we can improve.”

Senior quarterback John Rybak, a stalwart during the dog days last season, was encouraged during an earlier scrimmage game against Mt. Hope this fall.

 “It felt good to have a sideline of players actually cheering for you instead of just two guys. It's a lot more encouraging.” 

Though they are still clearly a work in progress, the Division 4 Tigers had some bright moments in a 21-6 Injury Fund road loss to D-3 Middletown Thursday night. Rybak threw the ball well, including a 50-yard reception to sophomore wide receiver Usman Akbar that took the Tigers down to the six-yard line in the second half. Rybak finished off the drive by throwing a soft over-the-shoulder fade to senior wideout Tyler Riendeau for a five-yard touchdown pass and catch in the corner of the end zone.

After the game, Rybak was excited to talk about some of his new teammates.

 “We have some freshmen that are already starting to make a difference,” he said. “Defensive end Ben Harkins has made some great strides in our scrimmage games. He's been trying really hard at practice and he seems to be really improving. Tyler Carreiro, our starting left guard, is also freshman. He’s been playing well too.” 

The Tigers play their first official game of the season at home against Smithfield Friday at 7 p.m. 

“We’re going to get the team rolling for that,” Rybak said. “We'll be conditioned, we'll play the whole game and we'll compete.”