There have been a number of schools that have closed their doors or made the decision to discontinue athletics over the last few years, but you would be hard pressed to find another football program that has been through more adversity than Keystone College.
While other programs were making cuts to athletics in the face of the COVID pandemic, Keystone saw it's very first season of competition cancelled in 2020 due to the pandemic.
A winless 0-10 fall season of 2021 was followed by a 3-7 finish as their young roster began to mature into 2022. Then, 2023 saw a 2-8 finish.
Following a dip to 1-9 last fall, rumors began to swirl that Keystone College was preparing to shut their doors and while the subject of threats to their academic accreditation. Those rumors, combined with some unique timing circumstances while Keystone was weighing going to a club schedule anyway, led to The Landmark Conference deciding to move on from as a member of the league. That has led to a schedule featuring just a few varsity programs, a JV team, while filling the rest of the schedule with some club teams.
While Keystone student athletes won't use a year of eligibility with the schedule they've managed to piece together, a number of players decided to transfer elsewhere, leaving the program with a depleted roster the staff is hoping to build back up to about 75 players before the start of the fall.
Now, they're also losing their head coach in Justin Higgins, who has stepped down to accept another coaching position.
Higgins, hired to build the program from the ground up in 2018, is the only head coach the young program has ever known.
Stepping in for him is pass game and special teams coordinator Hugh Kirwan, a former Marist (FCS - NY) linebacker who has been part of the staff the past five seasons.
The appointment of Kirwan is one aimed at providing some stability to a program that has seen its fair share of adversity over the last few years, and some success this fall would surely help Keystone find a conference home to help Kirwan and provide a solid foundation to continue to build their young program on.