‘It’s been a minute’: New-look Norland is a title contender for the 1st time in a decade
The centerpiece of Norland’s high-stakes offseason this year was a day at the beach.
What better way could there have been for these overhauled Vikings to all get to know each other than a 200-person picnic at Haulover Park?
“Everybody was there,” coach Daryle Heidelburg said, “even though you may be new.”
This was every player on the team and just about every player’s parents, the cheerleaders and the dance team, coaches and administrators. They all got to Miami Beach early, took over the grills and staked out their places for the day. It was the sort of thing Heidelburg felt like he had to do this summer to make sure Norland, now surrounded with the sort of expectations Miami Gardens hasn’t seen in close to a decade, could actually put all its new pieces together and really contend for the Class 2M championship.
The defensive line has four new stars — two from Jackson, one from Carol City and one from Monsignor Pace. The secondary has two — a cornerback from TRU Prep Academy and another from the Spartans. There’s a new star tackle from the Generals, too, and a star athlete from South Broward.
In an era of sports defined by player movement at all levels from the professional ranks to the high schools, no one in South Florida has revamped their roster in one offseason quite like the Vikings.
From Jackson came star defensive linemen Tycoolhill and Tyclean Luman, and star tackle Raynor Andrews. From Monsignor Pace came star defensive lineman Dimitry Nicholas and star cornerback Donavan Philord. Star defensive lineman Germaine Carter left the rival Chiefs for Norland and star cornerback Larry Tarver Jr. joined the Vikings from TRU Prep.
They all joined an already-improving team and now Norland is poised to actually chase a state title for the first time since 2011.
“It’s that same buzz that we had when we won the state last time,” Heidelburg said. “It’s been a minute.”
From top to bottom, the Vikings have one of the most talented roster in the state, with easily more than a dozen future Division I players and one of the best quarterbacks in Florida to lead the whole thing.
At this time last year, there was no telling what the future held for Norland. It had been four years since the Vikings were last in the Florida High School Athletic Association playoffs and a decade since they last won a postseason game, and then they put together their first nine-win season since they won the Class 5A title in 2011 and got all the way to the Region 4-2M title game, where they actually hung with Miami Central before losing 34-20.
A late push meant the score was probably closer than the game actually was, but it was a huge difference from what happened just six weeks earlier, when Norland lost back-to-back games to Booker T. Washington and Central in Miami by 64 combined points.
In the playoffs, the Vikings came back and beat the Tornadoes, and then gave the soon-to-be national-champion Rockets a bit of a test in the region championship.
The turnaround, Heidelburg insists, was as important as all the additions.
“Last year, they didn’t even believe that they could win,” he said. “Now, I think the kids understand how good they can be. I think they’ve crossed that learning curve and now I’m just trying to get them to focus on how the community is rallying behind them, how the school, the principal. It’s not an us-against-the-world type of mentality. It’s a we. There are people in their corner now. Embrace it and accept the help, and things like that because we can’t do it by ourselves. We have a tall task. Whether it’s Central or Booker T., or Northwestern—whoever it is, we’re going to have to beat someone just to make it to the state championship game.”
The talent isn’t much of a question, so the last few months have instead been about building cohesion, whether it’s trips to the beach for team bonding or Xtreme Action Park in Fort Lauderdale for some friendly competition on the go-kart track, or just bringing in guest speakers to practice to emphasize what it means to play at Norland.
Duke Johnson, who was the star running back in 2011 and played in the NFL since 2015, came by to tell stories from the last state title. Former NFL linebacker Antwan Barnes dropped by to talk about the 2002 state championship. Heidelburg even had principal Rhonda Gaines-Miller give a speech to the team to emphasize how the Vikings’ potential success would be meaningful to an entire community and not just the 50 or so players on the roster.
“This offseason,” quarterback Ennio Yapoor said, “we got a lot of new transfers, a lot of new kids, so we decided, Man, let’s get that chemistry, that bond, really build up to be that state championship team.”
It’s hard not to link Norland’s massive influx of talent to Yapoor.
A little more than a year ago, Yapoor joined the Vikings after Champagnat Catholic unexpectedly shuttered. He had just been Florida Dairy Farmers’ Class 2A Player of the Year as a freshman and followed it up with an equally good season against even stiffer competition, helping Norland put together its best year in a decade by throwing for 2,924 yards and 27 touchdowns, and rushing for 1,092 and 10 touchdowns.
The junior is an easy player to rally around, a true dual-threat quarterback, who plays much bigger than his 5-foot-11, 225-pound frame. On any given play, he’s just as likely to run through a linebacker as he is to run around him. He starts every morning by waking up and stretching, and then hopping in an ice bath, mature well beyond his years and looking for every edge to get better after finally drawing attention from college coaches last year.
“If your quarterback believes in himself, believes in the team,” Tycoolhill Luman said, “you know your team’s straight.”
Yappor doesn’t turn it off in practice, either.
It’s not unusual, Heidelburg said, to see the quarterback try to plow through a defensive lineman in practice, and then get up and jaw with him. The defense starts yapping back, which prompts the wide receivers to come to the quarterback’s defense, which prompts the defensive backs to get in on the action and then, all of a sudden, everyone’s energy level is lifted.
“I feel like when guys see a young kid like that, a young kid who can go up to a bigger guy and be like, Man, you have to be better than me,” Yapoor said. “I have a heart of a lion. I fear God, I fear God only. I’m a God-fearing man and I fear no other kid, no other anybody, so I feel like when I step on that field, they put on their pants like how I put on their pants, and I feel like that’s something people can respect and something people actually want to follow.”
Everything the Vikings do has to be geared around camaraderie.
Norland knows it has the pieces in place. It’s welcoming the attention and hype. The Vikings are ready to take their shot.
“All the hype around Norland, it is what it is,” said star linebacker Jeremiah Marcelin, who’s about to begin his fourth season as a Viking. “We’ve got all the transfers, we’ve got everything, so all the hype is going to be there. Now, you’ve just got to lock in and not look at all that.
“We do have what it takes to win state and more.”
