1st Year PlanUpon being hired, the first thing that I will do is hold a team meeting to introduce myself to players, staff, administration, and anyone else who wishes to attend. In this first meeting I will set out my vision for the football program and let my expectations be known from day one. "We Will Aspire to Reach a Standard of Excellence in EVERYTHING" If something is worth being done, it is worth doing well. Our students will be held to a standard of excellence in everything, we cannot let mediocrity thrive in any aspect of our program. Ordinary people don't play football. Ordinary people don't give up four hours a day to go sweat in the hot sun and bust their tail. If we are going to sacrifice all that time, effort, and energy lets sacrifice it at full speed, foot on the throttle, and with a determined spirit to win every rep, every practice, every day. If we are going to do something we are going to attack it with an all out effort and determined resolve to be the best at it. This standard is applied to everything that we do. In the classroom, we want to be the best student we can be; and we will push to compete with ourselves and others to achieve the highest team GPA possible. Getting a B is great! It's awesome! But we aspire and work even harder to earn that A. We will celebrate the kid who gets straight A's. We will also celebrate the kid who brings all failing grades up to C's. Our mission academically is "Every player who plays for this program will graduate". We will attack the weight room every day, with excitement, enthusiasm, and energy. We will hold ourselves to a higher standard and be a leader in the community, we will not claw and act out for attention, because we are stronger than the ordinary temptations. We will be people of high character. We will be dependable, reliable, and people who grow up and dominate their jobs. We will never be satisfied with being ordinary in anything; and because of that we will have the will to believe more and push harder for the things that we want and the things that are right. We will pay attention to every detail, we will dominate the little things, and do them right 100% of the time. We will all dress the same and be together as a team. We will talk together, we will eat together, and we will win together. Our Standard of Excellence will not be sacrificed for anything. As a coach it is our job to set the vision and expectations of our program and to hold our students accountable to those expectations. Our expectation is "EXCELLENCE IN EVERYTHING" Building a Winning Culture"Players Don't Care How Much You Know, Until They Know How Much You Care"
Things are different in our day and age. There is a lot to compete with. Have you played video games lately? They are EXCELLENT! It's no wonder that so many kids want to go home right after school where they can soak up air conditioning, eat whatever they want, and be whatever / whomever they want on a video game console. Playing football is hard; in order to compete we have to give out students something that they aren't getting at home. WE MUST BUILD RELATIONSHIPS WITH OUR ATHLETES Some athletes have extraordinary home lives, great parents, who teach them right from wrong and give them plenty of attention and praise. However, there is a growing trend of students who have single parents who are stretched too thin; multiple family homes, parents who work all the time, some whose parents aren't involved, or live with an aunt/uncle/gradmother or someone else. I've had so many students who have had one or both parents pass on, that I cannot list it. There is a lot of pain out there. In the past three years I have had an entire starting offensive line unit with no father figure at home. I've had a students father commit suicide in the middle of the season. Multiple students who have lost their homes, folks who have been unable to pay bills, a student whose parents were both arrested the night before a game, and a student athlete who's home burn down. That student athlete still showed up to work; because we had built a culture in which he knew where his family was and he wanted to be with his football family and friends that badly. As Head Coach it is my responsibility to establish that culture. The culture is established by greeting your players everyday, by letting them know that they are not just important but they are critical to the success of the team weather they are a 1st team all American or the 3rd string kicker. It is created by building their self esteem, letting them know what they do well and letting them know that you care enough to see them grow in all areas of life. It is established by showing them how it will help them for the future and by being a positive voice in their life when they think they can't accomplish something or when they do something wrong. It comes from doing the little thing. Knowing when their birthdays are, celebrating them, and acknowledging their existence. It comes from getting to know who is in their family, who is at home; who their parents are, who there siblings. What they like to do when they go home. By inviting them out in the community and doing things together as a football family. Being a Head Football Coach goes well beyond playing football, we must raise these kids to be responsible adults. You can only do that by developing significant relationships. Once you establish a relationship with every player in the program kids will be bought in to your culture; and it will run itself like a well oiled machine. Having a Vision and Building a BrandIn order to change the culture of a school that may need a culture change it is important to build your own brand. At Matanzas High School, a perennial 3-7 school since it's inception, we worked extremely hard to successfully change a losing culture and it started with building a brand.
The name Matanzas stunk. Anyone that saw that name knew that it was the name of the school who had a losing record every season. One of the first things our Head Coach Robert Ripley did was change the program identity from Matanzas football, to "Pirate Football!" He would refuse to say the name of the school and constantly tell the kids, you aren't apart of that old culture, that losing culture, you are PIRATE FOOTBALL. You can now make your own legacy. Pirate Football has never lost a game. Despite knowing that we would have a rough first year, he kept the Seniors bought in by telling them; "This is the group that changed the whole deal. This is the group that changes the culture. This is the group that when you come back years from now and we are winning district, regional champions, you can look back and say we started that; we are the reason that this program is successful; because we bought in when everyone said that we couldn't do anything." That first year we went 3-7. The next year 8-2. The kids bought in, invested themselves, and it was all because of developing relationships and branding. Along with changing the identity of the football program; Ripley had the vision to be excellent in everything. That meant having the best and being the best. Ripley knew that the kids would buy in more if they had a coach who was willing to make the program look like a first rate program. For 5 years they had some 3rd rate uniforms from a company you never heard. He went out and fundraised and got all new 3 sets of College Level Adidas Jerseys and undershirts. The kids showed up to practice wearing highlighter orange/green anything that wasn't a team color. Ripley fundraised and got the kids all new team apparel. The locker room was plain, he brought in a consultant to put wall wraps; locker tags/stickers/name plates on everyones locker. The stadium was bare; he brought in a consultant to wrap the whole stadium in "PIRATE NATION" and put up flags on the press box. He got the kids hats, sweaters, gloves that he gave out for attendance and fundraising. Senior banners went up around the stadium, photography crews took and distributed pictures, he did everything that he could to make the players feel that their coach cared about them, their program, and it's image. After an 8-2 season the work was not done. Brand new field equipment (sleds/chutes) and a redesigned weight room. The kids literally go from the outhouse to the penthouse in terms of their football programs image. Do you think they are willing to sacrifice more for him, their coaches, and their program? At our program we will build a brand and a culture of winning. We will be excellent in everything we do from the way we look, to the way we dress, to the way we practice, to the way we play. Developing A Plan of Action
Upon entering a program among the first tasks I will accomplish is to gather as much information about the football program as possible. I will interview and work closely with administrators, athletic director, current staff, players, and parents to find out what the program already does well, where it needs to improve, and where we are just completely inept at.
I want to know the history of the program, records, alumni, old weight room numbers, how practice was structured, how meeting were conducted, traditions, was practice filmed, how was scouting done, everything that we can find out about the program good and bad. From there we will develop a positive/negative board to go in conjunction with our dream board. Every problem that we identify through our interviews with our staff we will research and have a measure in place to help alleviate that problem and evaluate the results of our measures at the end of the year. If numbers in the program are an issue we would first find out why and then develop a plan to increase our numbers and assign a goal to that problem. If team academic performance was poor, we would research a plan that has worked elsewhere and implement that plan; monitoring and tracking results. We will repeat this process every year. We will be excellent in everything! Winning With People
The Head Football coach cannot do everything himself, he needs a quality support staff around him in order for the program and school to be as successful as possible. As soon as I get on staff I will work relentlessly to bring about the best football and support staff that we can put together. I have had the opportunity to work with staffs from Central Florida, North Florida, and Atlantic Coast. The staff that I put together will be strong dedicated professionals who first and foremost care about the success of our kids. I cannot have someone who is selfish or who is only a quarter of the way in or a game night coach on my staff. The staff I put together will be excellent communicators, excellent teachers, and will understand how to teach the game. I am always open to retain quality people, recruit coaches from within the school, and will place coaches in the position that best helps the program.
I am also dedicated to assembling a fantastic support staff that can make up teachers, students, parents, volunteers, and anyone who wants to help make our football program great. I will emphasize how we need everyone; how everyone has different skills that they can offer, and no matter how minimal they feel their contribution is it serves a huge role. These people include filming, sideline video, photography, media, equipment, stats, website, recruiting, boosters, concessions, and anyone who can help make our program great. Getting Players to Buy In
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