Windham’s first football co-op brings together ‘two different worlds’ in eastern Connecticut

WINDHAM – When the Windham football team runs through pregame tackling drills, it’s all wrap and lift.

No banging pads. Just circle your partner’s hips, hoist, run a few steps, gently slip him back down.

Any banging of the pads, at least in pregame, is to keep the beat for the “WINDHAM” chant.

Except it’s no longer just Windham kids lending their voices to that call. This season, with its roster numbers running low and the neighboring Coventry-Windham Tech-Bolton football partnership dissolving, a Windham High program that dates back to 1923 has forged its first co-op.

It’s a whole new dance floor in the heart of Windham County. While Windham Tech, through a league decree by the Connecticut Technical Conference, has merged forces with Cheney Tech, Windham High has brought aboard Coventry and Bolton, plus the first high school players from Parish Hill-Chaplin.

It’s been a mutual lift for schools that, at the tail end of last season, were uncertain where their football future lay.

“I won’t say it saved the program, but it sure did help,” said Randall Prose, in his 10th season as Windham head coach. “I was concerned. The numbers were extremely low.”

Windham, after three straight playoff appearances, saw its record slip to 1-9 and its roster to 30 in 2025. Coventry, also 1-9 last year, was suiting up just 10 as the host school of its co-op.

With forces joined, there is hope of regaining varsity success right away while also rebuilding through a sub-varsity structure that was absent last year.

It will take work. Windham is one of the few teams in Connecticut that runs a wing-T offense. The new players have that to learn, plus the defense. Myriad kinks are being ironed out in preseason, even among experienced guys.

“I’m still going back, asking coach, ‘Hey, I’m still on this play, right?'” said senior Matteo Albano of Coventry, an All-Pequot League player a year ago. “And then you can see a little bit of frustration from the kids that have been in the program, been in the playbook for three years. So we’re still trying to get together on our line sometimes. It’s a mesh. I think we’re all coming together.”

Where the Whippets have already meshed is off the field, which holds a certain promise that extends beyond football. Windham may share borders with Coventry and Chaplin, but in other respects the communities are miles apart.

Windham High’s enrollment of 633 for the 2024-25 school year was 81 percent Hispanic/Latino and 13 percent white, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Parish Hill, with its state-smallest enrollment of 184, was essentially the reverse. Coventry, enrollment 395, was 86 percent white, 8 percent Hispanic/Latino.

And, yet, when the football players don those navy blue and maroon Windham uniforms – and even when they don’t – another picture emerges.

“The (Windham) kids introduced them to Dairy Queen,” Prose said. “They don’t have a Dairy Queen in Coventry, so they all went to Dairy Queen together. Then those kids took them to Coventry Lake when there was a lifeguard there. That’s cool watching them all get together.”

“One common goal,” remarked Windham athletic director Zack Konopka. “It’s been even better than expected as far as the integration and the kids getting to know each other. We’re neighbors, but two different worlds.

“Once you get kids together – and this is the great part about athletics – you’re bringing kids together from all different backgrounds and they get to interact with each other,” Konopka continued. “These kids are going to form lifelong friendships and bonds. They’re going to have played football together in high school, and there’s nothing like being on your high school team together.”

There were some previous connections. Albano had played baseball with Francisco Alvarado, the Windham quarterback. Nate Stark-Drury, the first Parish Hill player to sign up, had played in Windham Youth Football, which takes kids from Chaplin.

“They’re very welcoming,” Stark-Drury said. “At first, they didn’t remember me. I was like, ‘I played youth with you.’ It’s very entertaining to see old teammates that remember me now.”

Albano made a fast impression, and not just as a running back, wide receiver and linebacker. With his perfect attendance and exemplary effort, Prose named him a team captain.

“He’s nothing but a positive,” the Windham coach said. “It was an easy decision, to be honest with you.”

Albano says he’s fortunate. He joined a fairly young team, one more inclined to welcome a newcomer than perhaps an older team might have been.

“I think it would have been harder if I came onto a team that was, like, 25 seniors and a Coventry kid gets named a captain,” Albano said. “I know some seniors could be a little territorial. Like, ‘Who are you trying to come in?’ They’ve all welcomed us with open arms.”

Turns out, the new guys have been earning legitimate keep on the field, where demographic divides have been known to be bridged.

“The Coventry kids (fit) the Windham culture; they’re tough,” said Alvarado, starting QB since freshman year. “We have a couple kids starting and they play like Windham kids. They hit hard; they run the ball hard. We all get along really well. It’s like family.”

Ties that bind, dissolve

Coventry’s previous football family traced back to 2003, when the Patriots, after playing an inaugural varsity season as an independent, combined with Windham Tech as a co-op in the Pequot League.

The duo enjoyed quick success, going 6-5 in its first season and then reaching the postseason with matching records of 7-3 in 2004 and 2005. Another playoff berth followed in the 9-1 campaign of 2011. The five years in between trips saw a record no worse than 5-6 in 2008.

Bolton joined in 2012. The tri-op went 7-3 that season before slipping to as low as 0-10 in 2015.

The program rebounded to .500 in 2016, then attained its zenith in 2017 when Lyman Memorial of Lebanon signed on and the new four-team front went 10-0.

No Coventry co-op would ever win so many games again. In fact, over its final seven seasons, the team won a combined 11.

Lyman Memorial was gone after a winless 2023, shifting alliances to neighboring Bacon Academy of Colchester in the ECC. Coventry, Windham Tech-Bolton soldiered on in the Pequot, but it was a slog: 1-9 in 2024 and 2025.

Meanwhile, as Windham Tech’s participation had grown, Coventry’s had dropped.

“Coventry’s numbers have been on a steady decline for 10 years,” said Coventry athletic director Pat Cox. “When I started here, we had 30 Coventry boys and Windham Tech had 10, and that actually did flip-flop.”

After the 2025 season, when the co-op’s biennial agreement was up for routine renewal, there was talk of Windham Tech becoming the host school. That would have required financial and logistical changes. Ultimately, administrators from the Connecticut Technical Conference, Windham Tech’s home league, voted to combine the Mighty Tigers with Cheney Tech instead.

“I thought we could have made it work; we were over 20 years of co-opting with Coventry,” said Windham Tech athletic director Bill O’Connor. “We loved Coventry. They were really good to us. They have a great facility over there at Coventry. The kids enjoyed going over there, and there were a few years where we were a powerhouse. I’m sad to see it go.”

“That was truly our intention, was to try to keep it together,”Cox said. “It just wasn’t meant to be.”

With the Coventry co-op dissolved, Cox reached out to Konopka at Windham High, where numbers were also precipitously low. Windham never really had big rosters – not even when former coach Brian Crudden took the Whippets to the 2006 Class M final, not even during the three straight Class SS playoff appearances from 2022-24. But after graduating a senior class loaded with athletes in 2025, the team was down to 30.

The roster was as young as it was thin. Of the 30, 11 were freshmen and seven were sophomores. They were needed on varsity and they took their lumps, going 1-9.

Konopka had hopes of merging with all the teams of the former Coventry co-op. Every one was below the CIAC’s co-op thresholds of 32 players in grades 9-12 and 25 in grades 10-12.

Windham Tech, in particular, would be a natural fit. All that separates that school from Windham High is the campus of Eastern Connecticut State University.

“If Eastern’s field house wasn’t there,” said O’Connor, who coached Windham Tech baseball for 22 years, “I could literally stand on my baseball field and throw a rock and hit Windham High School’s parking lot.”

The decision of the CTC rendered that throw a stone too far.

“In town, everyone is asking, ‘Why didn’t you co-op with Windham Tech?'” Konopka said. “We couldn’t. Their school system said they had to do it.”

O’Connor’s thoughts on the CTC’s decision?

“The powers-that-be decided, instead of us having a co-op with us being the host school, decided to put us with Cheney,” the Windham Tech AD said.

“It’s our first year. If you call me at the end of the football season, I’d have a better answer for you,” O’Connor continued. “I think it will work out, but who knows?”

Longer travel is an issue. The daily practice commute to Coventry for Windham Tech players was 14½ miles round-trip. It’s nearly 44 to Manchester and back.

“That’s the sarcastic ‘fun’ part of figuring this out,” said O’Connor.

Coventry, meanwhile, has injected not only new blood into the Windham program, but a raft of equipment – helmets, shoulder pads, new headsets. The addition of Parish Hill extends the Chaplin-Windham youth connection.

Parish Hill athletic director John Krot didn’t need to be asked twice.

“We jumped at the opportunity simply because it gives kids another opportunity to play,” Krot said. “There’s always been kids here at Parish Hill who wanted to play football but couldn’t. It was a good match. It may open up the door for more kids if this co-op continues to exist.”

Before taking the field, Windham, Coventry, Bolton and Parish Hill needed to be formally approved as a co-op, first by Windham’s home conference, the ECC, and then the CIAC. Both were forthcoming this spring. A new co-op was born.

New kids in town

As preseason got rolling, 22 kids from Windham were on the roster. There were nine from Coventry, two apiece from Bolton and Parish Hill.

Hitherto, if a Chaplin kid entering ninth grade wanted to continue playing football, he’d enroll at a tech school or look to transfer to another public school.

Nate Stark-Drury was facing that quandary in the spring. He’d played Windham Youth Football since moving to Chaplin from Ledyard in elementary school. Now that he was finishing eighth grade, he’d aged out.

Looking ahead to high school, with only soccer and cross country on the Parish Hill fall manifest, Stark-Drury contemplated going to Windham Tech, then heard the locker room door at Windham was open.

“It was just very exciting to play with people that I didn’t know I’d be able to play with again,” he said.

Merely going to Windham every day holds entertainment value for Stark-Drury, who has since been joined by fellow Parish Hill freshman Kaiden Pacheco. Windham has ECSU, the Willimantic business district along Route 66. The little city, population 24,139, looms like a metropolis compared to Chaplin, population 2,070.

“There’s nothing going on in Chaplin,” Stark-Drury said. “When you come here it’s all exciting. It’s got lights and everything. No lights on our road. It’s pitch-black.”

In Coventry, things were looking dark for Matteo Albano late in 2025, when rumors were swirling about the imminent demise of the Coventry-Windham Tech co-op. He was in the midst of an All-League season, but in the big picture there was little to celebrate.

“They were talking about, ‘We have no program,'” Albano recalled. “We all got kind of devastated because that was right before our Senior Night.”

Albano, who has aspirations to play in college, was looking at the possibility of not having a senior season in 2026. He’s gone from that despair to being a captain of a program that, with a lift from its neighbors, aims to regain its former standing.

“Helping the team out is all I want to do because it’s always been bigger than me,” said Albano. “It’s always been about representing Windham and trying to bring them back to the playoffs and just doing my best to help them out.”

“Our kids landed in a good spot,” said Pat Cox. “They seem to be happy, and I know Randy Prose does a great job. … I’m glad it worked out, because they need us as much as we needed them.”

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This article originally published at Windham’s first football co-op brings together ‘two different worlds’ in eastern Connecticut.

Ties that bind, dissolve

New kids in town

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