Meet the Coach

 

    Due to the huge change in the game of football over the past twenty years or more, I have felt it necessary to change the way I perceive the game.  At the high school were I played in the mid-1970’s, we ran a very successful triple option attack out of the Wishbone formation. We “pounded” the ball over and over again, and averaged nearly 400 yards per game (360 or more were probably due to our running game). We also played great defense (6-1 Invert, forerunner of the 43), and lost only two games per season on average.  Our team’s problem, as I see it now, is that our offense was too one dimensional. Today, consistently successful teams need to run the ball well “between the tackles” AND throw the ball well.

    In my opinion, today’s teams that are either just beginning their programs or have been down on their luck (for example, low talent, lack of dedication by the players, and/or poor coaching schemes and strategies), face seemingly insurmountable problems. I believe that after nearly forty years of loving the game and being an ardent student of the game, I have come upon the answer of how to accelerate a new team’s success.  My idea is to fuse old-time ideals such as hard work, dedication, and discipline with today’s latest coaching strategies and schemes. I will explain below.

Putting Things in Perspective

    I was like many young coaches when I first had the opportunity to become a head football coach. I ate, drank, and slept football, and unfortunately, so did my wife.  She didn’t really have a choice because she loved being involved more deeply in one of our school’s programs. By the way, coaches’ wives have got to be some of the most understanding, patient, and loving creatures on God’s green earth. They may not understand the attraction the game has for their husbands, but being great wives, they stand 100 percent behind them.  My wife, Lindy, is just such a shining example. My first head football coaching job was at Big Timber, Montana, and I put Lindy through hell. I was obsessed with improving Big Timber’s football team as quickly as possible. At that time Big Timber had suffered through a half decade of poor teams and three different head coaches. Thinking I knew it all, I thought I could make the team successful by working them extremely hard - like we used to work when I was in high school.

    What I didn’t realize was that by the time I entered high school, my old team had a winning tradition which had been built over a number of years by Coach Jim Myers. Like practically everyone, he too had suffered through some lean years as a head coach.  It’s just that by the time my class happened along, he had learned a great deal about the game and had implemented his changes in his program.

    I was head coach at Big Timber for three years and did not win a single varsity game. Not a single game! A large part of the reason for our losing ways was me. I became stressed out, belligerent, and had forgotten how important it is for the players to actually like their coach. I had a coach in college who I disliked, and I didn’t realize it until it was too late that I too was disliked by the players. (We did win four of the six junior varsity games my final year, but that was probably due more to an increase in talent than anything I had done.)  At the end of the third year, I realized I was probably harming the program (and players) more than helping, and I resigned.

Through it all, and at two other schools since then (Geyser, Montana, and Silver Stage, Nevada), Lindy has stayed by my side.  She loved and supported me at a time when many lesser ladies would have taken off.  (By the way, it IS well known that the divorce rate is very high among football coaches.)  Football wives suffer right along with their husbands and their kids when football is held up on a pedestal.  The point of my rambling is that I finally came to realize what much smarter coaches know - that you need to keep things, especially football, in the proper perspective.

Today, this is how I rank what’s important to me:

1.      My relationship with God.

2.      My family, Lindy and our daughter Taylor.

3.      My job.

4.      Football.

Even though I rank football fourth, it doesn’t mean that I don’t think about it all the time.  I do ---but today I am able to remind myself about what is REALLY important. And I don’t want to seem like too much of a hypocrite, but I am really trying to be a good Christian and rank God ahead of Lindy and Taylor, but it’s not easy sometimes.

    I was an all-state fullback and linebacker at Class B Harlowton and a member of Jack Johnson’s East Shrine Football team in 1976.  I was an OLB at Western Montana College under Head Coach George Nelson and Assistant Coaches Chuck Lucero , Charlie Frey, Bill Donahue, and Elmer Musgrave, being named an All-Frontier Conference Linebacker in 1978.   I didn’t begin coaching until 1990 when I returned to WMC to be a graduate assistant under Head Coach Mick Dennehy.  I stayed another year and was an assistant under new Head Coach Mick Delaney.  In 1992 I began my teaching and coaching career in Chinook, Montana.  Since then I have taught and coached in Big Timber, Geyser, and Silver Stage H.S. in Silver Springs, Nevada.  I became a library media specialist for Great Falls Public Schools in 2004.  In the spring of 2006, I will complete my Master’s of Education degree in Integrating Technology into the Classroom from online college, Walden University.