Colerain picked to win GMC again

GMC: The Vote

Here is the Greater Miami Conference preseason football coaches poll, with total voting points and first-place votes (in parentheses):

Last year the Middletown High School football team snapped Colerain’s 61-game Greater Miami Conference winning streak, although the Cardinals still managed to win their ninth consecutive league championship.

And the GMC coaches have made Tom Bolden’s squad a prohibitive favorite to make it 10 in a row in 2009, with nine of the 10 league coaches picking Colerain to finish first.

“I think it was good for all of us that the Middies won that game, but Colerain is still the king of the hill,” Hamilton coach Jim Place said.

“It’s still their crown until someone knocks it off of them,” added Lakota West coach Larry Cox.

According to the preseason poll, the Firebirds and the Middies are the two teams who have the best shot at unseating Colerain. But Bolden said the threats extend beyond just those two.

“The GMC is just going to get tougher and tougher every year,” Bolden said. “This league has always had a lot of talent, and now the quality of the coaching is exceptional.

“You have a cagey veteran like (Hamilton’s) Jim Place, and a guy like (Sycamore) Scott Datillo, who is as good a coach as there is out there,” Bolden continued. “And obviously there’s Jason Krause at Middletown, who is a really good, young coach. And I think Aaron (Fitzstephens) will do some good things at Fairfield. You can’t overlook anyone.”

Of Colerain’s nine consecutive league titles, three were shared with teams who missed the Cardinals in the schedule rotation that season. This year, Lakota West misses both Colerain and Middletown.

But Cox isn’t clearing room in the trophy case for the school’s first-ever football trophy.

“If the average person is looking at that, they’d said, ‘Wow, that’s an easy (GMC) schedule,’ ” Cox said. “To say that would disrespect the other teams in the GMC. There are some great coaches and some good teams on that schedule.”