BC Bears program benefiting high school teams

Bringing youth football to the town of Boulder City in the summer of 2023 with the creation of the BC Bears, founder James Cracolici is seeing the popularity of his organization flourish.

Serving as a feeder program for the high school football program, Cracolici’s organization is starting to pay dividends after year two, while growing interest in the community at a rapid rate.

“As of now it’s looking like we’re going to have four starters on varsity who came up through the Bears program,” Boulder City High School football coach Bubba Mariani said. “These guys are going to be either freshmen or sophomores and that’s not something we’ve really done in the past because we needed them to learn the game, playing freshmen and junior varsity football.

“What the BC Bears program has accomplished in its few years is teach these kids the game early and help teach them our schemes and the way we want to do things, so by the time they get to high school they have a chance to compete at the varsity level, even as underclassmen. When James started this, he had a vision and we’re starting to see it play out.”

Playing in the Southern Utah Nevada youth football league, where the feeder programs for 3A rivals Moapa Valley, Pahrump Valley and Virgin Valley field their youth programs, the BC Bears have experienced both success of the gridiron and in community interest.

Expending over the past few seasons, the tackle program has extended from one program made up of seventh and eighth-graders in its first year, to now four separate teams: an eighth-grade team, a seventh-grade team, a sixth and fifth-grade team and a fourth and third-grade team.

“By expanding, it’s great because it now gives parents the opportunity to get their kids involved in football from day one,” Cracolici said. “The goal we have is to have kids in our program from third grade all the way to their senior year of high school.”

Building off the success of their two programs this past year, Cracolici is excited that the success of the Bears has drawn more eyes.

Building a foundation for the future, the sixth-grade program went undefeated in the regular season, before finishing 7-1 on the year.

The eighth-grade team finished .500 during the regular season before losing a tough bowl game to conclude the season 3-4.

“First and foremost, this is about development,” Cracolici said. “We tell our boys all the time, no one got a scholarship based off their seventh-grade season. It has been encouraging though to see them come together, be competitive in these games and win some of them. Our goal at the end of each season is to get better and we’re accomplishing that.”

With the growing number of teams now reaching four, Cracolici envisions even more milestones for the future of the Bears program to help create sustained success at the high school level.

“Our goal is to field a team at every individual grade level, because that’s what our competitors do,” Cracolici said. “Moapa Valley has two eighth-grade teams and over 130 kids total in their youth football program and Virgin Valley is roughly the same size, while we currently trend at a respectable 78.”

He went on to add, “If we can get it to the point where we can field teams at each level and start becoming competitive, I think you’ll really start to see momentum growing at the high school level. I think it’s great that we’ve been able to go to playoff games under Bubba (Mariani) and coach Chris Morelli before him, given the disadvantages of not having feeder programs to work with. The goal is to compete for a state championship, to give our town something to be proud of. We’re on our way to achieving those goals.”

Not just creating a presence in the tackle football scene, the BC Bears also serve a feeder program to the high school girls flag program, fielding three separate feeder programs.

Preaching equality and the opportunity for all to play, the popularity of the girls high school program has sparked interest in the community, creating 9U, 11U and 13U programs.

“Girls flag football is red hot right now,” Cracolici said. “We’ve been using the success of the high school program to draw more kids in. Every opportunity I get to show someone the picture of the high school team at Allegiant Stadium for state, I do. Our goal is to get as many kids involved, both boys and girls, and give them the opportunity to fall in love with the sport.”