Fairfield Union plans to shake up the MSL-Buckeye
By: Jackie VanHoose
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The MSL-Buckeye has always been a close conference, both in location and in standings at the end of the year. While Bloom Carroll has remained a Goliath-esque figure, winning the conference for the larger part of a decade, it is always by a slim margin and there’s always a shot for any team ready to take home the gold. One of those teams is Fairfield Union, who may be ready to show the conference a hard time this year.
This coming season is Andy Clark’s fourth year as head coach for the Falcons, and his impact has been felt in the program. The year before he arrived, Fairfield Union went 5-5 in the regular season and didn’t get a spot in the playoffs. Last year, they went 7-4 and enjoyed their first playoff win since 2001. This upward trend has a clear source, and Coach Clark is continuing to build a culture that’s already showing results.
Coach Clark is not interested in reveling in the success of last year nor in any one player’s performance, instead offering a mindset of teamwork to his boys. Fairfield Union has an accomplished group of upperclassmen who have been putting in work to see the culture changes Coach Clark has instilled through. “As a group, collectively, they’ve done an outstanding job of being not just vocal leaders but setting an example first about the way things are supposed to be done in the weight room and out on the practice field.”
Notably, this is the first year where every player will have only known their head coach to be Clark, and the sky’s the limit for the Falcons this year. “The kids, they want to compete and win a Mid-State League – Buckeye championship, and we want to get further in the playoffs than we did last year, so that’s at the forefront of everyone’s mind and we got to take it one game at a time.”
Fairfield Union plays the same teams in their first two weeks that they did last year, offering a chance for redemption in two of their three regular season losses in the 2025 season. Their other loss was against Bloom Carroll by only 10 points. With all of this in mind, the Falcons may be ready to rock the MSL-Buckeye and see some of that postseason success that they’ve been craving.