Season of Change

Being a teacher, a coach, writer, and sometime advice giver I have seen many things change in schools and many things stay the same.  While I could talk about the changes I see, I will stick with things that never have really changed. Those things are kids, students, players, or whatever the context in which you want to call them. Kids are kids I’ve always said and thought. The times change in which the kids grow up in, but kids and their issues they deal with are really no different than the issues I dealt with when I was growing up. Case in point…

Every spring, usually around late April to early May it comes that time around Mesa, Arizona when thoughts turn to spring football practice and the new crop of players emerge into the locker room and onto the practice field. Coaches wonder what kind of athletes they have, who has speed, who has good fundamentals, who has passed their classes to remain eligible, and most importantly which players are coachable. Players wonder what their coaches are like, will we win games, will I be a starter or sub, and hopefully, will I get better to be on varsity in another year? For coaches and players alike, those are legitimate questions for the spring.

This past spring at Mesa High School in Mesa, Arizona I and my other coaches got a new crop of players. These are players that are in the latter part of their Freshmen year, so they are heading into their Sophomore year of high school. They are J.V. football players. One year from being a high school varsity player. Spring football is an exciting time because we can finally put the previous season to rest and start concentrating on the new season in front of us and what we have to do as coaches to get these players ready to excel for the upcoming football season.

While some coaches get really fired up for spring practice, my approach, and the approach of the other coaches at our school is fairly tempered. We don’t get to excited over things or to down about things because the players are just in shorts and t-shirts. Anybody can look good in shorts and shirts, it is when we go and put on the pads that we see the separation of the kids who hit and the kids who want to hide under the table when somebody is coming at them full speed.

Spring football came and went without much fanfare because I was really only interested in seeing what we had has far as talent was concerned. One thing was apparent though. There was talent with this group of athletes. The talent was a bit raw and undisciplined, but it was there. Just waiting to be coached up and taken to places they had yet to see.

As any coach would tell you, you can have all the talent in the world, but if they can’t play together and know there role then the season will not be a success. As with any team, there are cliques and when those groups of athletes can’t mesh with the other players, it tends to be a long season of frustration for the team.  The cliques on the team during spring ball were pretty much under control once the team came out onto the field to practice.

When spring turned to summer and the hot weather started, the kids took a little time to adjust to the hot weather. Now, when I say hot weather, I mean Arizona hot. Days of 105 degrees and hotter. We are lucky down here in the Valley of the Sun that there really isn’t much humidity. They say it’s a dry heat and that is exactly what it is. A dry heat. It’s akin to putting your head in a pizza oven for 2 hours a day on the practice field. As coaches, we struggle all the time trying to stay cool, but these kids are running routes, doing drills, or doing some end of practice running. How they do it, I have no idea. I walk off the field sweating profusely. The players are drenched and that is even when we practice in the early evening when the temperature outside is ONLY 100 degrees. That always shows a bit toughness to me when these kids are asked to practice in these kind of conditions. 

It’s through this kind of practice in the heat that lessons on being tough and fighting through pain or exhaustion come into play. My coaches and I preach all the time about “finding that extra something” or “dig down deep to make a play”. We put the scenario in their head about it being the fourth quarter of game and they are the ones that need to make the play. “Will you find a way to make the play or do you give into the pain or exhaustion?” I say to them. Young athletes look at their football coaches with disdain and anger when we say those things. I understand that, but lessons are to be taught when things are not easy for them. Players don’t learn anything when they are easy, makes them lazy in my opinion and when things get tough for them during a football game then they can’t rely on those tough practices to get through the hard game times and make a play. Football is a tough, physical game and you have to be ready for anything that happens.

During the summer we went through a time where we were having great practices. The kids were showing progress with the new offense that they were being asked to understand and they were accepting of the new pressures the coaches were putting on them. As coaches we thought we had a group that was going to mesh together early and we could put more responsibility on them. It’s funny how much of a rollercoaster off-season practice and workouts can be.

July hits and it’s a time of “what are these kids thinking?” in the weight room and on the field. We had more kids not showing up to practice or coming up with excuses as to why they could not be there. I’m not really big on excuses.  Even though summer time practices are not technically mandatory, the kids need to be there to soak in the offensive and defensive schemes we have for them. When I was younger, it didn’t matter the sport, I was act practice. Family vacations were during a limited time when there was not practice or games. Not today. Different times, different ways of thinking for parents of athletes these days. This was the struggle for the coaches during July.

In Valley of the Sun, school starts early. It starts during that first week of August. It’s tough on the kids and coaches. Most of the coaches, like myself, also teach at Mesa High, so it’s combining responsibilities of the classroom and on the field. This is also another time for the players that they have to learn how to balance things in their life. Between home, family, and school they have a full plate of things going on in their life. The other thing that makes our situation unique is that some of the things happening at home is not conducive to maintaining that balance that these young men need to be productive at school. How these players find the will to keep doing what they have to do during the day, I have no idea. That’s a lesson that these kids teach me every single day.

That is what makes coaching high school players rewarding for me. When I say that this was a season of change for the players, it was a season a change for the coaches. These kids appreciate everything that they have because many of them don’t have a lot themselves. These kids give more to others around them than kids who may have everything at their disposal. It shows me a lot about them as young men.

As the season starts, we get out of the gate quick with a victory against the Mustangs of Dobson High. We didn’t play our best, but we win. The next couple of games we win and go to 3-0. The lessons for these kids continue because we, as coaches, had to guard against over confidence and we learned that grades were potentially going to affect who was going to be able to finish the season with us.

I took the team aside and tell them very directly that they need to get themselves into the afterschool tutoring and to bring notes from the teachers confirming that they were in tutoring. I told them that they had let the team and their coaches down by not performing in the classroom. Most of the kids that were affected by their grades took care of that situation. It was a constant and daily reminder to the athletes because they had to understand that without their grades being at a certain level, there was no football. Football is the carrot that keeps some of our athletes in school. We need to dangle that carrot over them as much as we can as coaches. It’s a discipline thing. It takes the same amount of discipline on the field that it takes in the classroom. As adults we know that. As 16 year old JV football players, they don’t. They may say they do, but in reality they don’t fully comprehend that part of it. We know as adults if we don’t perform at our job, we don’t hold that job that long. As teenagers, they have people holding their hand a little too much and telling them that they will be just fine. When in reality, the athletes need to told that everything is not fine and they need to change their ways or things will be taken away from them that they cherish.

We get the grades taken care of and we have a date on the field with a rival school that is literally 10 minutes from our school. It is a school that we consider a rival, but they probably don’t look at us as a rival because they have been dominating our school in football and just about everything else for a long time. As Freshmen, they lost to this team and very much wanted a victory this year. The players were into the game from the opening kickoff. On the opening kickoff we knock the ball loose from the opposition. I keep telling the kids, “Keep it up, don’t let them back in the game!”. As the game wears on, we keep the pressure on and walk away with dominating victory. Mesa High 41 Mountain View High 14. The kids walk off the field overjoyed. I had players coming up to me with tears in their eyes, wanting to hug me or the other coaches, and yelling “We did it!”

There is no greater feeling as a coach of young high school athletes as when the players accomplish something that they wanted. That victory over Mountain View High School will stick with them for a long time. They walked around school the next day with their chests knowing that they had slayed the dragon and it was great see. The coaches and I talked with the players at the following practice that they can play with anybody, that they can compete, and that they are talented enough to do some special things in the future. Lesson communicated, hopefully lesson learned for the players.

In the end, the season ended on a sour note and our team finished the year 4-4. The kids wanted that winning season. Tears were shed, but we told the team that shedding tears is normal. That it’s supposed to hurt when you come up short and it’s supposed to make you want to work harder in the off-season and fix the little things that held you back in the previous season. More lessons to be learned in the next year for these young men.

It was a good season with ups and downs, and most of all, these young men learned more about themselves that will carry over into next year. Carry on Mesa….