In my "Tower"Our football season was quite a lot of work. It’s always a good experience to come to a small school as a new coach. There is often a lot of responsibility out there for the taking. The coaching staff consisted of five coaches – The head coach acted as offensive coordinator and backs/linebackers coach. We had an assistant head coach who acted as the receivers/defensive backs coach with me as an assistant. Finally we had our defensive coordinator who took on the offensive and defensive lines with one assistant coach.
Two well trained freshmen standing behind "My Line"Our team was the very definition of a young team. Of thirty-some-odd players we had three seniors and two juniors. Our largest class was the freshmen who made up over half of the team. Generally freshmen are assigned to a Junior Varsity or even a freshman team when they show up on a high school practice field. We had no option but to play them at the Varsity level. We actually had quite a few freshmen starters, especially on our special teams.
All of this youth told me a few things before the season started. Even though my heart (and the football fan inside of me) told me we would win every game by a lot, I knew that we would be losing a lot of games. Also, we would have quite a few players who would stop showing up to practice once the losing started. There is just no way that every freshman out there wants to be pounded on by people twice there size and lose every game.
The Snow Bowl: One of the most beautiful places to lose four games
I turned out to be partially wrong in the best possible way. We had very few, if any freshmen quit the team. We had two seniors show up late only to quit when they were sure that we were in for it. The freshmen stuck it out through the entire year and I was very proud of them. We ended up losing every game we played against class B varsity teams. We won our first game, a scrimmage against a class C team. After that everything was a terrible loss. The scoreboard always showed a blowout no matter how the game actually went. The problem with young teams is the “big play”. We gave up so many special teams touchdowns, third and fourth down conversions, and long runs for touchdowns. We couldn’t sustain drives on offense due to a series of problems dealing with execution of basic fundamentals – a clear sign of our youth and inexperience. If only I could be here for next year’s team!
Two well trained freshmen standing behind "My Line"Our team was the very definition of a young team. Of thirty-some-odd players we had three seniors and two juniors. Our largest class was the freshmen who made up over half of the team. Generally freshmen are assigned to a Junior Varsity or even a freshman team when they show up on a high school practice field. We had no option but to play them at the Varsity level. We actually had quite a few freshmen starters, especially on our special teams.All of this youth told me a few things before the season started. Even though my heart (and the football fan inside of me) told me we would win every game by a lot, I knew that we would be losing a lot of games. Also, we would have quite a few players who would stop showing up to practice once the losing started. There is just no way that every freshman out there wants to be pounded on by people twice there size and lose every game.
The Snow Bowl: One of the most beautiful places to lose four gamesI turned out to be partially wrong in the best possible way. We had very few, if any freshmen quit the team. We had two seniors show up late only to quit when they were sure that we were in for it. The freshmen stuck it out through the entire year and I was very proud of them. We ended up losing every game we played against class B varsity teams. We won our first game, a scrimmage against a class C team. After that everything was a terrible loss. The scoreboard always showed a blowout no matter how the game actually went. The problem with young teams is the “big play”. We gave up so many special teams touchdowns, third and fourth down conversions, and long runs for touchdowns. We couldn’t sustain drives on offense due to a series of problems dealing with execution of basic fundamentals – a clear sign of our youth and inexperience. If only I could be here for next year’s team!
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