Redhawks seek repeat

HINESBURG, Vt. (WCAX) - High school football camps have started around the area, and one school is heading into the season as a defending state champion for the very first time.

After a heartbreaking end to their first ever D1 state title game back in 2021, the CVU Redhawks reached the mountaintop last fall. With senior leaders on both sides of the ball, the Hawks started fast, with dominant wins over Middlebury and St. J.

CVU hit a pretty major speedbump when starting quarterback max destito went down with an injury. They were challenged in games against Burr and Burton and Essex...but Ollie Cheer stepped up big time under center, the Redhawks found a way to remain unbeaten in state, and they hit their stride again down the stretch en route to the D1 title.

Several key pieces from that championship team are gone: Alex Provost, Jack Sumner, and Destito to name a few...but Cheer is back, as are Jacob Bose and a talented stable of receivers. They’re part of a large group of Redhawk seniors hard at work this week, out to prove that Rahn Fleming’s CVU program is here to stay as one of the premier high school football squads in the state of Vermont.

“It gives us a lot of confidence,” Cheer says. “It’s a bigger target on our back for sure, but I think a lot of the guys are really confident going into this year. You know a lot of the guys got really good game experience. We got a lot of young guys who trust the process, so I’m really excited with what we have this year.”

“I told the kids this the other day in our very first meeting in the auditorium, 7 o’clock am,” Fleming added. “We are always proud, never satisfied. So one of the things that we talked about was making history in the sense of winning the first state championship in the history of the school. Nothing but gratitude to the players and staff that got us there, we stand on the shoulders of some pretty giant individuals, right? But it’s now now. It’s now now. So the history we get to make...is to go back to back.”

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