Faculty Letter

I introduced myself to each of them and explained how I handle the players' academics and behavior problems. I send out a letter every three weeks that allows them to notify me of any problems (academic, behavioral, personal). If there's an urgent problem, they know they can call me immediately.

This is something that we implemented for the first time in the fall of 2008, and it was a huge success. Here is the basic idea:

HONORARY TROJAN AWARD

We do this for all home games, including playoffs (which is where Brad saw it first-hand).

On Wednesday after practice we allow the team members to nominate up to four faculty, staff, admin, secretaries, cooks, maintenance, etc. for the Honorary Trojan Award for that week. The players must be able to justify the nomination by telling how the nominee has shown positive support for our program. We allow the players to think about the nominations over night, and then we vote before practice on Thursday.

On Friday morning the team captains for the week (We rotate captains on a weekly basis.) come to me to get the certificate for the honoree and home jersey #99. The captains then go to the Honorary Trojan and make the presentation. They also ask the honoree to wear the game jersey (Our guys wear their jerseys to school on Friday.) all day long, and they invite the honoree to join us for pre-game film study and our pre-game meal as well as to join us in the lockerroom before the game and to be on the sideline with us during the game. I ask the Honorary Trojan to address the team both before we leave the lockerroom and in our on-field debriefing after the game.

We make a big announcement in the daily school announcements and on the PA at the stadium.

This has been a great benefit to our program as it has really built some great relationships between our program and the teachers in the building. Only male teachers and maintenance staff were selected last year. It will be interesting when a female is selected.

I should point out that I used to be very selfish about who was allowed to be part of my football program. I have learned to find ways to include lots of people, and I think that has been a great change in my approach.

Here is the email that I sent to the entire school during pre-season:

"The FB team is working very hard and is getting better every day. They are very excited about the upcoming season and would like to include teachers, librarians, secretaries, counselors, nurses, custodians, cooks, administrators, etc. in what we are doing this year. Therefore, we are beginning a new tradition wherein each week the team will select an honorary team member from among those people listed above for varsity home games. The weekly captains will be around on Friday morning to present a certificate and game jersey (#99) for that night's game. The honorary team member is invited to join us for our team meal in the commons area at 4:00 p.m. and for the rest of the night. Yes, that means that the honorary team member will be part of our pre-game rituals and will stand with us on the sideline for the game. We want this to be special. The guys want to honor those adults in the building who do so much to support the team, and I think this is a great way for that to happen. If you are selected for this honor, please make every effort to join us that night. It would be unfortunate for the guys to be rejected when they are taking this very seriously. Thanks in advance for your support."

Superpower,

This is an excellent tradition you have. We have a less than favorable situation with regard to faculty support for the program. I've struggled to think of ideas that are more than a one time deal. This honorary faculty award is a week to week thing that emphasizes support throughout the season. I want to couple this with something that will help with out of season faculty support which is when we have difficulty keeping a thumb on all of our players. We have a high maintenance group of kids this coming season as far as difficulty with academics, numbers issues, lack of commitment in the weight room, etc. So any help we could get from the faculty will be a definite help to our coaching staff of four. Thank you again for the idea. I plan to use this next season.

It's not a letter but the idea is the same. Our senior players choose a teacher each week to wear their jersey (opposite of what we're wearing). It's good for faculty support of the program plus it makes some of them actually come to the game.