New Team, Familiar Story. Harper Leads Eagles to New Heights

Last March, Ty Harper held his first meeting with the team as the new head football coach of the Chautauqua Lake/Westfield/Brocton Eagles. They had barely started when Walter Lukasiak, a junior two-way lineman, said, “What are you going to do to get us over the hump?”

Harper laughed at the memory. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard it. He’d heard the whispers around a small town. He knew the expectations would be sky high for a man with three state championships on his resume.

“I heard some of those things,” Harper recalled. “I live in Mayville. My kids go to Westfield. My wife works at Westfield schools, so we’re pretty embedded in those communities. ”He had been a consistent winner at Clymer/Sherman/Panama, winning those three Class D state titles. He hadn’t been brought in to finish second.

“I had high expectations for this group of kids,” Harper said. “This being my first year, my main objective was getting to know the kids and building relationships. Anytime you’re taking over a new program, you're maybe not as familiar with the kids as you’d like to be; that’s the foremost objective. You’re trying to build trust with them.   

“I said, ‘We’re going to work really hard to prepare'.”

Nothing could have prepared them, or their coach, for the controversial transition. Talk about pressure. It had been there since January, when the school board decided to hire Harper, who was leaving CSP to be closer to his family and see his sons play. He and his wife, Lauren, have a 10-year-old, Colt, and twins Cal and Trey, 8. Ty also has a step-daughter, Tanleigh, who is in college.

But Ty’s wasn’t the only family profoundly affected by the change. He was replacing Ryan Gibbs, who had coached the Eagles to a 7-3 record the year before and had a lot invested in the program. Oh, Gibbs had two sons returning to a promising squad — Tristen, a sophomore linebacker, and Brayden, the Eagles’ star senior quarterback and one of the returning captains.

Sure, Ty worried how the Gibbs boys would react to their dad’s replacement. There were rumors around town that Ryan, who admitted later that he was heartbroken by the move, might take another job and take his sons with him.

“Certainly,” Harper said. “That was probably my greatest point of anxiety, what my relationship would be with those guys and whether or not they would accept me as their coach. But they’ve been nothing but friendly and coachable. Their father has been extremely supportive as well.”

Harper, a 2004 Fredonia High graduate, says success at any level comes when teammates care about each other, putting personal issues aside. That’s what happened. The players pulled together, took rapidly to a new coach and a new system, and went on to have the best season for CL/W/B in its current iteration.

Chautauqua Lake won a close game against Harper’s old CSP team, recovered from a mid-season, 45-0 loss to Southwestern/Frewsburg on Homecoming, then ran the table from there. They avenged that loss with a 21-0 win over Southwestern in the Section VI Class C title game at Highmark Stadium. And last weekend, the Eagles rallied from an 8-0 third-period deficit to beat Section V's Alexander/Pembroke, 11-8, in the Far West Regionals at All-High Stadium.

Now 11-1, they meet unbeaten Chenango Forks of Section IV in the state semifinals at noon on Saturday at Syracuse-North Cicero, looking to advance to the state Class C title game the following weekend at the Dome in Syracuse.

They peaked at the right time, as Harper’s teams have historically done. They stayed together because they played for each other.

“I’m truly proud of these guys,” he said. “They’ve worked really hard to get better, and they’ve been very receptive to coaching. At this point, nothing they do really surprises me. They’re hard-working kids and have a great attitude about things. These kids are very resilient. I think things could have gone off the rails there at halftime (in the Far West Regional), but they buckled down and listened to what we had to say to them, and came out and did a really good job of executing in the second half.”

Chautauqua Lake’s offense was abysmal in the first half against Alexander/Pembroke. They turned it around in the third quarter, as Brayden Gibbs made some big throws with CL/W/B down, 8-0. He hooked up with senior Asher Olson for a 30-yard touchdown, then floated a pass into the left corner to Olson for the 2-point conversion. Gibbs’ 30-yard strike to Devin Hewes set up Carson Fairbank’s decisive 32-yard field goal later in the third. Defense did the rest.

Harper praised the leadership of his senior captains — Brayden Gibbs, Fairbank, leading tackler Trent Houser and Olson. But he had special regard for Olson, who made a remarkably quick return from an ACL knee injury suffered in October of 2024 and became the greatest expression of the team’s resilient character.

“It definitely starts with Asher Olson,” Harper said. “He’s such a great story.  He’s about 13 months off a torn ACL. Crazy stuff. Watching the film from last year when I had gotten hired, they were a completely different team with him on the field versus after he got hurt.

“It speaks to his character. He would work so hard to rehabilitate that knee. He was cleared to return to football activities in July. He was doing 7 on 7s in July. I’ve never seen anything like that. He’s such a good kid, too. He’s a genuinely kind kid, treats everybody with great respect. We love Asher.”

Olson said the injury took a heavy toll on him mentally. He loves football and his teammates, and felt the Eagles could have made this run a year ago if he hadn’t gone down in midseason. He was determined to come back strong and let his hard work be an inspiration to his teammates.

“I think a little bit, yeah,” Olson said. “I always want to put my best foot forward and work as hard as I can to set an example for the team, show them that I’m willing to work for them if they’re willing to work for me, too.”

Olson also had feared that the coaching change might tear the team apart.

“Yeah. It was a real drastic change,” Olson said. “I did worry how it might affect the team. Having a completely new coaching staff is difficult, especially when it’s your quarterback’s father and he’s been coaching for so long. But I feel everybody just decided to stick together as a team and welcome the new coaches.”

Kids will trust you if they believe you make them better. Harper and his defensive coordinator, Chris Payne, have a long history of that. It wasn’t easy, but the Gibbs family did the right thing. Brayden Gibbs dumped the ice over Harper’s head after the sectional final. Ryan wrote a moving post on social media, admitting it had been hard for him but saying he had nothing but respect for Harper and had found peace. Harper was brought to tears when he read it.

Now the Eagles are two wins from a state Class C championship. Salamanca beat Chenango Forks in the state semifinals a year ago, so Harper was able to watch film of that game thanks to his friend, Salamanca head coach Chad Bartoszek.

“Chenango Forks is tremendous,” Harper said. “That’s a great program. Over the last two or three decades, they’ve been a powerhouse in New York State football. So we know what we’re up against this weekend, for sure. With Forks you have to match their physicality. They’re not doing anything fancy. They’re coming downhill and punching you in the mouth. Salamanca did a great job matching that physicality. They were able to get them behind the sticks and force them to do things they didn’t necessarily want to have to do.

“That’ll be the key. If we can hang in there on the offensive and defensive line, I think we have a chance.”