Update I - Coaching Again

I imagine that seven months after my previous post it’s time for an update. I did in fact meet with the Coach back in February. We talked a bit about me, a bit about him, and a lot about Five Town Football and the high school team. I met his son Collin, our sophomore quarterback/free safety. It’s impressive to meet a freshman in high school (at the time) that is bigger than me.

A full six months before the season started, Coach stuck to the basics of our team structure. We were expecting a good number of returning upperclassmen to the mixed varsity/junior varsity squad along with about 15 new freshmen from the feeder middle school team. Our numbers would be near 45 to start the season.

We planned on running a spread offense out of the pistol formation. The pistol is basically a short shotgun. That is, the ball is snapped to the quarterback about 3 yards behind the center instead of 5 yards like the traditional shotgun. Nevada made it famous in college football and you can read up on it on the infamous Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_football_formations#Pistol

The spread offense refers to the scheme that spreads the players out, utilizing the width of the playing field to create seams in the defense. We planned on utilizing both the run and the pass to exploit these seams. Generally a team will use their best athlete that can throw as their spread quarterback (in our case Collin) in order to create an additional running threat. Our defense was going to be a three man front utilizing our returning upperclassmen talent to free up our four linebackers.

Coach and I talked about having me coach the linebackers and quarterbacks/running backs. I have a genuine interest in influencing our linebackers, as they tend to set the tone for the attitude a defensive squad carries into a game. Alas, it was not to be - as the season approached, another coach was unable to commit for the season. I was more needed as a receivers and defensive backs coach.

That’s not the only thing that changed as the season approached. Our athletic director managed to schedule us 8 exhibition games as a class B varsity squad in a trial status. In their final season of play our returning seniors would see games under Friday Night Lights for the first time. This reminds me… much of the expected “returning upperclassmen talent” didn’t return when we started camp on August 18th. We had our work cut out for us.