Turnaround Stories

I do not have one yet, but I will...this I promise.

I am not an expert by any means. In fact this is my third year coaching, my first as head coach. I got lucky. Keep that in mind as you read what follows.

The single most important thing is to get the athletes out for football and to get them to buy into the program. We all talk about it being all about the Jimmies and Joes and then refuse to put forth the effort to recruit athletes that could really help us win. I'm not talking recruiting from other schools, recruiting in YOUR school. I managed to get two "BB players" who ended up being first team all league at QB and WR. Both seniors. One played as a Fresh the other hadn't played since 8th grade.

What is just as critical is to get them to buy in. Sometimes its as simple as changing schemes. I took over a tight power team and made it a spread passing team - or at least thats what they thought. We threw the ball 32% of the time this season. They probably threw that much last year, but the kids perceived us as a spread fun and gun team. When in fact, I threw the ball less and less as the season went on. They believed we had a chance.

The leaders will actually be the easiest to convince. The leader of my team started at QB. Moved to RB because the BB player came out of nowhere and helped the team. He understood. Get him (or them) to believe and they will run throuhg a wall for you.

Put them in situations in which they can be successful. We lost the first game of the year by 12 points. This team beat them by 50 the year before. We outgained them by 20 yards offensively. Even though we lost, we had tons of success. The kids really believed we had a chance because we had some success which is something they hadn't had a lot of. The next week we won by 40.

I am definately still learning. My big project now is getting them to lift. A lot of the issues we have are because we aren't very strong. Had I tried to run a tight power system, not only would the athletes not gone out for football, we would have been outmathed in all but probably 2 games.

Turned a 0-9 team into a 6-3 team. Barely missed the playoffs. Lost to the district champ by 6. We have a long ways to go but we are heading in the right direction. I would say go for it. My dad always says (and I'm not sure I believe this 100% but I can see it to an extent), coaching at the high school level can win a lot of games. Lets face it, there are a lot of coaches out there who do not have a clue. And I am careful not to pretend that I know very much. But I try to limit the mistakes I make that cost my team. For instance, in the first game of the season that we lost by 12 points. We had two possessions 1st and 10 that we didnt score a TD on. I called passes down there when we could have run it in. I, to some extent, cost the team that game. I got better at just punching the ball in when we had those opportunities.

And lastly, refuse to lose. I hate losing. I refuse to lose. Does that mean I don't lose, certainly not. But some places have a history of just accepting losing as the way things are there. That is the way it is here. Our girls VB team won three matches all season. They were close in a lot of games, and lost. Other teams knew what it takes to win. We are working towards that. Those who go out and expect to win (not hope to win) usually do. It's not fool-proof but the kids have to believe in the value of winning. I believe in teaching life lessons and all that stuff and wouldn't sacrifice integrity for wins, but winning is important and anyone who doesn't believe that probably does a lot of losing. My dad told me, play the game to have as much fun as possible, and its always more fun to win.