Photo: @HCrossFB


When the Holy Cross Crusaders heard and saw the news they’d been waiting for last Sunday, there was a little celebration that quickly turned to focus on the task at hand.

Holy Cross watched the NCAA FCS Selection Show as a team and saw they would be hosting a playoff game at Fitton Field for the first time since 1983. The opponent will be Sacred Heart, but it really could have been anyone, Bob Chesney and his team just wanted to get to work.

“You want to keep watching this or do you want to get to work?” he asked his team in a video posted to social media by HC. It was more of a rhetorical question, but Chesney got the response he was looking for and the Crusaders quickly got back to the film room.

This past week, Chesney met with the media to talk about what it means to have a home playoff game in this already historic season.

“It’s been a little while, but we’re finally back,” he said. “As I talk around town here, it sounds like a lot of people are going to this game which I’m really excited about. A lot of people are back fro Thanksgiving…we’re just hoping for a good showing. These guys, our guys are well prepared, they’re excited…this team is very good we’re about to play. You don’t get here by accident.

“It’s going to be a huge challenge and one we’re really excited about. We’re excited about the buzz around town and happy to get Holy Cross to a point where it hasn’t been in 40 years.”

On top of the excitement surrounding the first home playoff game since a 28-21 loss to Western Carolina in the 1983 NCAA D1-AA playoffs, Holy Cross received a boatload of Patriot League accolades this week as well. Holy Cross had 12 first-team selections, eight second-team selections while Jacob Dobbs was named the league’s Defensive Player of the Year and Chesney was named the league’s Coach of the Year.

“Individual awards are the direct result of team success,” Dobbs tweeted out when he found out about the award. “So blessed to play next to as well as be coach dby amazing people. To say I’m blessed to be a part of Holy Cross football is an understatement.”

Last year, the Crusaders were dealt a tough hand having to face the No. 1 team in the country South Dakota in the postseason. At the time, Chesney wanted his team to embrace that feeling and use it as fuel and motivation throughout this year.

Now, as his team embarks on another historic day for the program in a year full of them, it’s safe to say they took his message to heart.

“Last year we took that trip, I know we had only played three games to that point, but we were missing 27 players when we went out to South Dakota,” he said. “We did not feel like that was our best product that we put out on the field and we knew that. We knew we had to correct that, we knew we had to stay intact. We always talk about the team that’s most intact is the one with the best chance at the end of the year to raise a trophy and move into the playoffs.

“I think we did that. The way we practiced, the way we played, the way we rotated a lot of the things we did. The rest days we had in there, the way we built practice plans all was very different this year than in the past. I think we tried to fully make sure we put these guys in the best position every day to stay healthy, continue to progress schematically and situationally, all the things that come with football fundamentally while trying to stay safe. The last two years we went into the playoffs we didn’t have a lot of our starters available and now, we feel a lot better about it.”