Photo by Peter Nowlan
The Rockets seek to build their strength and community to have a season of success
By Peter Nowlan
Hometown Weekly Sports Reporter
Despite losing 28 seniors from the class of 2025, this year’s new-look Rockets squad aims to chart their own path to success.
The 2024-2025 season was a historic one for Needham High School football. They finished the season with a 12-1 record, with their only loss being against Xaverian in the D1 state championship game. It was the first time they’ve reached the finals since 2011. Now, the Rockets set their sights on a new season. The personnel has changed dramatically, but the goal remains the same.
When talking to some players in the 2025-2026 leadership council, the message was straightforward. “We’re all here for one goal,” Ikenna St. Marc said. “And that’s just to win.”
St. Marc, a senior offensive lineman, is among a group of seniors who’ve been able to learn from the players before them in order to understand what it will take to find success again in the new season. “We have people who’ve returned who have really controlled the mindset of what we had last year,” St. Marc said. “That was the mentality of just grinding, staying focused.”
It’s not just talk from the players. Head Coach Doug Kopcso holds this current leadership core in high regard: “These guys understand it, they’ve been preaching the same thing all offseason. We’ve got a great leadership council,” Kopcso said. “But to know that this is a new season. We haven’t earned anything yet.”
And the players aren’t the only ones attempting to refocus after a terrific 2024-2025 season. Coach Kopcso himself is entering new territory as a nationally recognized head coach after being acknowledged as the Don Shula NFL High School Coach of the Year for his efforts in the prior season. This award is a distinction given to one coach in the New England region each year who exemplifies the coaching qualities of the aforementioned NFL Hall of Fame coach.
However, Coach Kopcso understands more than most that it is the players who largely dictate the success of a season. Some new faces to look out for include senior quarterback Tyler Langford, senior offensive linemen Ikenna St. Marc and James Alperstein, senior wide receivers James Lalonde and Caden MacNamee, junior wide receiver Jayden Greenfield, and junior linebackers Will Cassidy and Grayden Loeb.
With the loss of the Massachusetts Gatorade Player of the Year in Aiden Williams, as well as 27 other graduating seniors, Kopcso will have to shake up his playbook a bit to find a different method to winning games.
“We’ve definitely had to key in on what our guys’ strengths are,” Kopcso said. “I think we’ve done a good job in the offseason of figuring out what we do well and how we can run an effective offense with that.”
“I think it’s a lot of building on last year,” Langford added. “And then kind’ve doing what works best for our team. I think we’ve spent the offseason figuring out what works well for us.”
Rockets fans should expect to see more of a focus on the passing game with this year’s offense.
“We’ve got some really talented wide receivers, some really talented guys on the outside,” Kopcso said. “I think that’s a position group that’s been most surprising in a positive way.”
In the last practice of the preseason leading up to their first game, Langford and his receivers seemed to click well on multiple occasions. The football found itself smoothly transferred from the quarterback to the receiver’s hands in encouraging fashion. Despite the team’s 46-12 loss against Milton in their first game of the season, a strong culture of leaders and a newfound chip on their shoulder can potentially guide this team to making this loss a distant memory. High expectations abound for this Needham team who were able to accomplish so much in the prior season.
“Let’s make our own story,” St. Marc said. “They gave us a legacy, so let’s build on that legacy.”
The Needham Rockets will have a difficult home-opening matchup against a historic rival in Natick High School at 6:30 p.m., September 12 under the lights at Memorial Field in Needham, MA.
