Rockets Football Reloading for Another Run

August 29, 2025
• Needham has high expectations after the last two big seasons. 

The 2024 Needham Varsity Football season was one for the ages, with a 12-0 record heading into the team’s  trip to Gillette Stadium for the MIAA Division 1 State Title game. After falling by just 7 points to Xaverian, the Rockets are reloading for another big year.

It won’t be easy, as 28 seniors graduated, 20 of whom were starters for the 2024 team, and some also played key roles for the 2023 team that made the state semis. So finding new players to fill those roles has been the primary order of business for Head Coach Doug Kopcso and his staff.

“My expectations are the same as last year,” junior Parker Amodeo told The Needham Channel at Needham Football and Cheer Media Day on Aug. 22. “We had a really good year last year, but I don’t want it to end there, I want to keep building and keep getting better.”

“Expectations are definitely high, we have to live up to last season, we lost a bunch of kids, but still the same team,” junior Will Cassidy said. “We believe we’re going to work well together and be able to fill that role.”

“People are going to be surprised. I think they’re probably underestimating us,” said senior James Lalonde, one of the eight members of the team’s Senior Leadership Council, all of whom were interviewed by TNC at the first ever Massachusetts High School Football Media Day, held at Memorial Field on Aug. 13. “Everyone knows we’re losing 20 out of 22 starters, they think we’re going to be some really young team that doesn’t have it in them. But I think we’ve been doing really good at our recent preseason camps, our 7v7 tournaments. Our skill guys are looking good, our o-line, James Alperstein, Ikenna St. Marc, they’re both looking really good. Everyone else on the o-line, too. So I think we’re definitely going to be a surprise to a lot of people.”

Kopcso spoke to TNC at both media day events and added much more about this year’s group of leaders and why he believes in them.

“We have two guys coming back with extensive starting experience: James Alperstein and Caden McNamee. We have Colin Mancino, who played extensively at full back near the end of the year, so he has some big game experience,” he said. “But a lot of these guys, they were learning from the tree, if you will, last year. Ikenna St. Marc is the type of guy, his character is so high, it’s almost out of control. He’s always doing the right thing, always saying the right thing. Just an exceptional leader, even when he wasn’t a starter last year. These are selfless guys. You can go right down that Leadership Council, to a person, they understand the mission, they understand the vision.”

New starting quarterback Tyler Langford is another one of those leaders that learned a lot from last year’s core. “It was really great learning from guys, like Griff, for three years now,” Langford said, talking about 2024 starting QB Griffin Carr. “I learned so much from other great leaders we had on that team. I learned how to win, how to compete, and how to be a good team member and family member.”

The team has been putting in the work this offseason, focusing on getting better each day and building chemistry as a group. Inclement weather hasn’t deterred them from those goals either, as many of the players know from last year, when it poured during both the State Semifinal vs. St. John’s Prep and even the Thanksgiving game against Wellesley.

Kopcso said his team has already practiced in the rain.

“It was our best day, it was very smooth,” he said. “Really an opportunity for everyone to start clicking and figuring out how to work together and I thought they did an excellent job, especially under the circumstances… If you keep it fun, the kids understand, we’re playing a game, it’s out in the rain, it’s no different than when you were a little kid playing pickup in the backyard, and then you can start to figure out the X’s and O’s.”

“(Coach) Kopcso’s done a great job of building a really good culture around our team that really strives to get better every day,” Langford said.

“Day in, day out, kids showing up to practice, giving 110% every rep, that intensity is what’s going to bring us there,” added Mancino, another senior member of the Leadership Council.

This year the Rockets open their season on the road at Milton on Friday, Sep. 5. Last fall they shutout the Wildcats at Memorial Field 24-0. While they’re excited to finally hit the field, Needham knows coming away with a win won’t be easy, particularly because the 2023 team’s only loss before the State Semis was a nail biting 10-9 loss at Milton and head coach Steve Dembowski.

“We start on the road, that’s always a challenge,” Kopcso said. “Starting against a Dembowski led team, those players are excellent. They were very young last year and they were still one of the top teams in the state. So we’re very excited about that challenge. You don’t want to start off in a situation where you’re not being challenged and tested… We’re very excited to see how we match up against one of the perennial powers in the Bay State. Our hope is that we can gel and make sure we have a great game plan going in, but we’re very excited about that opportunity.”

“We’re going to come out hard, we’re going to come out firing and we’re going to hit hard,” junior Grayden Loeb said. “Everyone’s going to be bottled up with excitement and energy from the whole offseason, waiting to get back out there. It’s going to be really fun, it’s going to be awesome. I’m excited.”

After the opener at Milton, the Rockets will host their home opener on Friday, Sep. 12 at 6:30 p.m. from Memorial Field.

To check out the full football preview from TNC Sports Producer Ashleigh Tobin, click the video box below:

Don’t forget, The Needham Channel and Needham Local are your official source for not only Needham Rockets Varsity Sports, but specifically Football. You can watch game broadcasts on The Needham Channel, streaming on needhamchannel.org and on the TNC Roku App. We’ll also have highlights on our YouTube Channel and Social Media (i.e Instagram & Facebook). For full game stories the night of each game, be sure to check in here at needhamlocal.org, as well as sign up for our Needham Local Newsletter, which delivers headlines to your email every Monday at 1pm.

This article was altered from the original posted on August 29th. The article erroneously referred to the 2024 game vs. Xaverian as the first time the Rockets traveled to Gillette Stadium for the State Title Game. The Rockets faced BC High in the 2011 Division 1 Title Game.