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01/04/2017 11:00 PMComing into his senior year, Charlie Littler knew that he and his fellow offensive linemen would play a key role in defining what type of season the Valley Regional-Old Lyme football team was going to have. Charlie joined the Warriors as a freshman, but has been playing football since the 4th grade, and all those years were spent in the trenches on both the offensive and defensive lines. Combining that experience with a strong work ethic and fervent dedication to his team, Charlie became a valuable member of the Warriors’ offensive line as a guard this fall.
A genuine love of the game was what first brought Charlie out to the youth football field in Essex. When he arrived at Valley Regional, it didn’t take long for Charlie to impress the Warriors’ coaching staff as his hard work on Valley’s demo team helped the squad improve as a whole.
After his freshman year, Charlie dedicated himself to progressing by working hard both on and off the field. Then during his sophomore season, Charlie really started to come on strong. By the end of his junior year, Charlie knew that the Warriors had some big holes to fill as four of their five starting offensive linemen were graduating.
“I definitely knew after the Thanksgiving game 2015, that the whole team had to step it up,” says Charlie.
Charlie took his training to a whole new level during the subsequent offseason. Speed was his primary focus, but Charlie adds that improving his quickness and strength was paramount in order to compete against what were often bigger guys on opposing defensive lines. Charlie notes that he and his Warriors’ teammates all worked hard to get ready for the 2016 campaign.
“We focused on making ourselves better, making ourselves faster, to be the best that we could,” he says.
That summer, Charlie had a job as a first mate on a fishing boat on Block Island. Although Warriors’ Head Coach Tim King was concerned with how the job could interfere with Charlie’s progress, Charlie effectively juggled his responsibilities and made sure he hit the weight room.
“We were very worried that all his hard lifting in the winter time and then going to Block Island over the summer, that he may lose it,” says King. “But he didn’t.”
To ensure that he kept up with his offseason preparation, Charlie would come home to lift on the weekends and even a couple of days during the week.
“That was quite a commitment right there, to come all the way back from Block Island a couple days a week to lift with the team. I thought that was pretty impressive,” Coach King adds.
In addition to hitting the weight room and running sprints, Charlie and his Warriors attended the Boston College Football High School Camp, where he got in some reps that simulated game action. All the hard work paid off as Charlie proved a key piece on a line that paved the way for a productive offense. The immediate success of the Warriors’ new-look offensive line was a great accomplishment in Charlie’s eyes.
“I took a lot of pride in it,” Charlie says. “It starts with us. If we take a play off, it screws something up for the rest of the offense.”
Coach King says that Charlie’s greatest attribute was his consistency and he appreciates how hard Charlie worked to earn a starting spot, calling him “one of our weight room warriors last year, all winter.” It’s only fitting that Charlie was one of the recipients of the team’s Warrior Award this season.
For Charlie, the Warriors are more than just a football team. To him, they’re like a family, and Charlie knows that the tight bonds among his teammates are advantageous for Valley on the field.
“We’re a good group of friends,” says Charlie. “We’ll get down on the line and we’ll just have these little things that we pick up on in practice and, come game time, we know and I’ll say something to [Jeremy LaCasse] or I’ll say something to [Ian Humphreys] and we’ll know what we’re doing. It helps us a lot to really just be better than what we are.”
After only losing one game during the regular season, Valley-Old Lyme entered the Class M State Playoffs as the No. 1 seed, although some still doubted whether the Warriors could beat their first round opponent Berlin. Valley prevailed 30-12 and Charlie says the victory “was probably the best win of the season in my mind, being the underdog of that game, proving the doubters wrong, and showing that we are the real deal.”
When reflecting upon his senior season, Charlie feels proud about what he and his teammates accomplished.
“Our record, 10-2, 10 wins on the season, is impressive to anyone,” he says. “There were a lot of things that we did really well.”
Throughout the past four years, Charlie Littler developed into a reliable offensive lineman and he did it the old-fashioned way: with an unwavering work ethic. Coach King says that Charlie has “really come a long way and I’m very proud of him.” Charlie, in turn, thanks the people like King who’ve helped he and his fellow Warriors achieve so much through the past few years.
“I’d like to thank Coach King, [offensive coordinator Kevin Woods], and [defensive coordinator Bobby Sanchez] for helping us be the best we could be, coaching us to be better players, better people, and taking us to where we needed to be on the field and off the field, too,” says Charlie.