FOR THE PAST 30 years, our football program has had only two losing seasons. When you consider that 16 of those 30 years have had only limited teacher involvement on the coaching staff, it seems an even more improbable accomplishment.

With a town population of 4,400, our school is small, graduating about 100 students each year. We’re located in the north-central area of Pennsylvania and finding good, qualified coaches in our area is not an easy task.

Making things more difficult is the lack of young teachers who have an interest in coaching football. I’ve been fortunate to find loyal coaches from the community who love working with kids and are willing to dedicate the time it takes to sustain a successful program.

Types Of Coaches
It takes a special person to put in the necessary time and effort needed to work a full-time job and coach. For the most part, there are three types of coaching candidates available.

    1.    Coaching Wannabee. This is an individual who puts on a team hat, shows up for practice and, in his mind, is now a coach.

    2.    A Guy With A Whistle. This is an individual who puts a hat on and uses a whistle, but still doesn’t fully understand what it takes to run a program. This individual comes to practice to be a follower; but doesn’t take charge nor comes prepared.

    3.    Real Coach. This type of coach is motivated, wants to learn, wants to put the time in, wants to be successful and is willing to do what it takes to achieve his goals. This type of coach is very hard to find.

Lives Outside Of Football
We’re fortunate to have employers in our community who support our football program and allow our coaches to modify their work schedules to fulfill their coaching responsibilities during football season and allow them time off when it’s needed.

One of the other key areas that has helped us over the years is the fact that our staff has become involved in the community. Our full-time jobs allow us to keep in contact with the community and enable people to know us in roles other than coaching. We’ve also coached Little League baseball, wrestling, basketball, and have supervised the school weight room and assisted in other varsity sports.

This involvement has enabled us to keep in contact with players and their parents, which helps us keep our team participation numbers up.

Winter, Spring Work
As we prepare for our off-season, we start with a staff meeting in January. This is where I find out who is coming back to coach next season and what changes we need to make. We also make plans for attending football clinics and discuss key areas for improvement, off-season weight-room schedules, team fundraisers and the overall structure of our program. We stay in touch with our kids year-round with newsletters and lots of phone calls.

Our staff tries to meet at least once every month in the off-season to plan our activities for the year. In March we have a football sign-up meeting, as many of our athletes are playing multiple sports (and March is when wrestling and basketball seasons are completed). Because we’re a small school, we need to share the athletes with other sports and we encourage our players to participate in all sports. At this time we also start to plan our annual golf tournament fundraiser to be held in June.

In early May, we meet to plan out our summer program, which consists of 7-on-7 practices, linemen workouts, weight-room work, fundraisers, camps, taking our kids to colleges and contacting college staffs to come to our area to run a football camp.

Time For Two-A-Days?
We start our pre-season practices in August but, because of our staff and their work-related responsibilities, our two-a-day practices are different from most teams. For the two weeks that we run two-a-day practices, there are 6 days when we practice from 3:30 p.m. to 5:15 p.m., with our second practice held from 6:15 p.m. to 8:15 p.m.
We then have 3 days where we practice from 11:30 a.m. to 1:45 p.m and work solely on special teams. (Again, dedication is key — our coaches take vacation from work for this activity). This change breaks up the monotony of evening practices and allows us to run our afternoon sessions from 3:30 p.m to 6 p.m. Following our afternoon session, we have a 1-hour chalk-talk and film review from 6:45 p.m to 7:45 p.m. Our Booster Club feeds the team between the afternoon practice and the evening sessions. We complete our two-a-day practices the day before our second scrimmage.

Once school starts, we practice from 3:45 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. On Saturday morning, our coaching staff meets for about 1 hour before we bring the team in to review film. Once film session is done, our kids work out in the weight room. Generally, we try to be in the weight room on Saturdays and Mondays during the season.

We give our entire staff the day off on Sunday to recharge their mental batteries and get some family time in.