Laurel Hurricanes Win State Title in Youth Football

William Griffin was used to being part of winning teams while he played football and basketball at Laurel High School.

Now Griffin, who graduated from Laurel High in 1991, is part of a championship team at the youth level.

Griffin is the head coach for the U-12 Laurel Hurricanes football team that won the Division 2 title on June 4 in the Maryland Football Indoor Arena Football Championships.

The Laurel team beat the Germantown Panthers, 18-0, in White Marsh last weekend for the title. 

"It was a game we thought we would win easy," Laurel quarterback Jarrett Livas told Patch on Thursday. "It was good competition."

The Hurricanes were champions of regular-season play in Jessup and then faced Germantown, the the top team in its indoor league based in Frederick.

Led by Livas, running back Kevin Rankine and top defenders Semajoe Wicker and Sean McCutchenm, this was the first season of indoor football for the U-12 Hurricanes. They also had a U-10 team in the league and they ended up in third place.

"Kevin ran for two touchdowns and Jarrett passed for one" against Germantown, said Griffin, whose team outscored opponents, 230-12, during the arena season.

Many of the players on that team were part of a Pop Warner outdoor team that won a state title last fall against the Prince George's Storm.

Ava Livas, the president of the Hurricanes, said her son Jarrett, an eighth-grader at Eisenhower Middle School, will be a freshman in the fall at Laurel High but plans to play for the Hurricanes in this coming outdoor season.

Jarrett Livas said he has played football for about five years and also plays AAU basketball. He said he hopes to play football at Laurel High as a sophomore.

So was the strength of the Hurricanes?

"It probably had to be our defense," said Jarrett Livas, who played some defense in addition to being the quarterback.

Some of the players on the Hurricanes attend Patuxent Valley Middle School in Howard County or Eisenhower.

Griffin played football at Laurel High for former head coach Chuck Hickes, who led the Spartans to their only state title in football in 1987. Griffin also played basketball for head coach Dwayne Jones, a Laurel High graduate who is now the principal of the school on Cherry Lane.

In football, Griffin--a resident of Jessup--was a quarterback and cornerback and in hoops he was a point guard for the Spartans. He has been a coach in the Hurricanes' program for nine years.

He said the field in Arena football is about 60 yards long and 35 yards wide and most games are played at indoor soccer facilities that are turned into football fields. The fall Pop Warner league has a weight limit but that is not the case for the Arena league, Griffin said.

The Hurricanes have held practices at Emancipation Community Park in Laurel and have also held workouts at the Cypress Street field.