Mission High School Bulldogs football fundraiser

Since Mission High School football coach Tyler Murray was hired in 2017 to become the Bulldogs’ head coach, he has had a five-year goal to construct his team into a perennial playoff contender.

Murray, whose team won four games playing arguably one of the most difficult schedules in their first season in Class C after moving from Class B as part of the 2016 reclassification, hopes to be at the top of the conference within five years.

“I have a five-year goal of being conference champions whether we are in Class C, 8-man or if we move back up to Class B, 11-man football,” Murray said. “That will be a huge and hopefully five years or so. We haven’t won a State championship since 1948, and that was quite a few years ago. It’s been 17 years since we made the playoffs and I really want to have that happen. Our goal is to have a winning season and we fell just short of it. If we had won more games, we could have made it.”

Murray and his Bulldogs team are taking one additional step forward to trying to bolster their football program by hosting a car wash Tuesday, May 29 at 3 p.m. in the parking lot of Valley Bank.

The car wash will be the first-ever fundraiser Murray, who began his first season as a head football coach in 2017, has ever done.

“From what I heard, the football team is pretty excited that they are going to do something and have the opportunity to raise funds for the program,” Murray said.

Murray said raising funds will be “huge” for building the program to where he wants them to go and cultivating the future of the program.

“The fundraiser is huge for the whole program and not just the high school,” Murray said. “This will help our flag football program get started again and get us new helmets for the middle school. The fundraiser is not just for the high school level. This is to raise funds for all of our football programs basically from third grade to graduation. It’s great the community is going to be involved and that is a good thing.”

Murray said putting together more community oriented projects like this will enable the Bulldogs’ football program to expand.

“Doing things like this fundraiser I think is important because our school has a certain budget and if we can expand it and squeeze a couple of extra dollars out of it, it will really help,” Murray said. “Our community really supports our football team. I think the aspect of community is really behind us.”

Mission High School hopes to expand its football program by adding a flag football program that will build the future of the Bulldogs’ football program by introducing the kids to the basic fundamental components of the game.

“It will help quite a bit because the kids will be out there running routes and be able to catch a football properly and those are the things that will help build the future of our program,” Murray said. “We have to teach kids to catch the ball in different ways and do more advanced movements. Playing flag football football into middle school will help out a lot with the time in football. The kids will be more advanced when they get into high school.”