Converting to Video Blog

After struggling for hours over the right words to write. I have decided I am best fit for a video blog. So it's done. Check it out at www.chiefpigskintv.com!

I Believe

This past summer, as we walked into Coach Stortz' office in Lake Zurich (IL), Coach Stortz tossed me a book. It was a book that he had required his entire staff to read that same summer. "I Believe... In Cream, Apples, & Football-Thoughts for Coaches" is the title of the book. Written by long time coach Larry Beckish.
"You can take it," he said.
Since then, not a week has passed that I don't pick up the book and read from it. It is filled with short stories from Coach Beckish's coaching career and even better quotes. To pick a favorite would be impossible, but I would like to share the quote that has been most prominent in my mind of late.

"I Believe...If you walk around with a game face on all the time, you won't have a face for game day."

When I first read it I laughed. But it was less than a second later that I was looking into my own actions to see how I measured up. Often times, throughout the school day I can see when the kids grow a little tired of me. If they missed lifting that morning, the kids will always walk or at least look the other way when they see me coming down the hall.
It is a constant struggle for me. I don't want to bug them, but I do have this overwhelming desire to see each of my athletes reach their full potential and no matter how hard I try, I will always eventual ask why they were not in attendance that day. Some days, it'll way heavily on me as I wonder if I'm asking too much of these kids. To lift weights 2 times a week before school nearly all year long. But it always comes back to this thought. A coach's job is to push an athlete further than he will go on his own. I really wish my school had a weight lifting class like many of the schools throughout Illinois and likely the nation. This would take the 'Bad Guy' tag off of my head. But we don't. So my options? My football team doesn't lift weights, or I push like crazy to get them there in the morning.
Fortunately, I really think this is the only area in which I struggle with this 'Take your game face off from time to time' concept. The kids enjoy talking with me for the most part. Though I do have to constantly play games with myself. How long can I go without talking about football? You want to know my saving grace? Video games. Though I don't get to play as much as a kid. I can still be found playing on my XBOX 360 1-2 hours a week in the off-season. It's amazing how the words 'Modern Warfare' spawn instant conversation in a high school classroom.

A Winning Formula

In my 3rd year coaching, I was on my way out to the field with an older, veteran coach. He was the current d-line coach and I was still very new to learning about the line on both sides of the ball.
"How do you decide which drills you're going to run each day, Coach?" I asked. I'm sure I was really just looking to make conversation, though I'd like to say I was always such an avid student of the game. But for some reason I have always remembered his response.
"Oh I just wait till (defensive) individual time rolls around and decide on the fly. I always work better that way." At that time I remember thinking, 'That can't be the best way.' And as each year passes, that former opinion has now become glaring fact.
No plan? Every human works better with a plan. You mean to tell me that you can't think of a better way to use time when given 20 minutes to think about it than when you're given 20 seconds? You don't seem to be giving yourself much credit.
Just last night I stumbled across an incredible website and was glued for a solid hour. The site? Personal Development TV. It started with a quick video of the famous Tony Robbins. Man, that guy can motivate. And it ended with an old man behind a desk in the 50's, Napoleon Hill. But let me tell you about my favorite for the evening.
The speaker said, "If I were to ask each one of you what 3 x 3 is, all of you could immediately shout out the answer, but if I asked you what is 5,128 x 2,165 odds are enourmous that not many of you could tell me the answer. But if I was to give each of you a pencil and paper, in a few moments all of you could tell me that answer. Why? Because you know the formula." It was a man named Zig Ziglar speaking. Turns out... he's pretty good. See the whole clip here: http://www.personal-development-tv.com/videos/zig-ziglar
I believe whole-heartedly that there is a formula for winning football games. We all know that football is not all about X's and O's. But do we all know that the rest is not just guess work? There IS a list of best practices for coaching football. It is up to each of us as coaches to find that list. I've got a pretty good list myself, but I know for a fact it's unfinished.

What I Learn From Watching

When I visited Cary Grove High School this summer, I met a coach that runs one of, if not THE, most successful football program in the Northwest Suburbs. I have often wondered how some coaches are able to put together such great football teams year after year. It is no doubt that there is a long list of factors that contribute to this success. Including the careful planning and efficient use of practice time, which is one of the things Coach Kay shared with us that day. If you run a large football program, I highly recommend taking a look at Coach Kay's video on http://www.chiefpigskin.com/. It goes back to one of the things a mentor of mine once taught me: "Why make up your own way when there is already a way out there that has proven to be succesful?" The attention to detail at C-G is apparent and I'm sure is a huge key to their success.

The thing that I have learned from Cary Grove that has most helped my program this year, was picked up as I watched game highlights of their team on http://www.mchenrycountysports.com/. The clip was just 2 minutes long, but as I watched, I immediately noticed their offensive line. Never had I seen an offensive line fire out so low, and stay so low throughout the duration of the entire play. The backs of the O line were flatter than my kitchen table and their talented running backs followed suit when it was their time to block.

I wasted no time trying to apply this same principle to my offensive line. "Fire out low! and Stay Low!!" Obviously, in the 2 months we used this coaching principle, we could come nothing close to the execution Cary-Grove achieves. But it helped my program win football games. With my own season ending just this past Saturday, I have already begun my list of 'To improve ons' and this item is at the top.

Watch the practice plan video by Coach Kay. You'll see the importance that Coach Kay puts on good coaching. And watch a clip or two of Cary-Grove playing some football, and see if you can see the results of such coaching as quickly as I could.

EAST

Their helmets read, "EAST"
Lincoln-Way East High School in Frankfort, Illinois is one of the most dominant public schools in the state. They are 49-5 in their past 5 seasons including a 2005 State Championship, and they have begun this season 5-0, outscoring their opponents 210-28. They represent dominance in Illinois.
Fortunately for me their head coach, Rob Zvonar, went to my high school where he played football and wrestled for my father. I have a little bit of an in at Lincoln-Way East and am not ashamed to say that I myself am a Griffin fan. So it was with much anticipation that I made my way up to Lincoln-Way East High School this summer for a shoot for Chiefpigskin.com.
It was a regular day of summer camp and now having been to several shoots, I was beginning to know what to expect. I arrived at 7:30am, a bit early, and began my search for Coach Zvonar, who as I quickly found out is known solely as Coach Z.
"Oh he's back in his room," I was directed. After finding Coach Z's room I saw that I was walking in on a film session. I was expecting to see him fumbling through some papers preparing for practice. Instead I found a room full of teenagers, with Coach Z and an assistant coaching the kids through every single play filmed from the day before.
That's 1 minute here and I'm already impressed.
Immediately following the kids made their way to the field and prepared for their day of camp. Though many programs were similar, none flowed the way this practice did. Nearly every kid was active at all times, nearly every coach was COACHING at all times. The practice was seamless. An onlooker may have wondered my mental condition as I'm sure my jaw was dropped for the entire morning.
This was football. This is how it's suppose to be done. Coach Z barely had to raise his voice. His players new what to expect and how to play hard. One play in live 1's vs. 1's and immediately 8 coaches were in coaching. A second play and they were right back at it. This program is a machine.
Most impressive of all was the amount of ownership the assistant coaches showed. Each was completely responsible for the play of his athletes and it was clear that each took pride in it. About midway through, Coach Z came over to me and we talked for 20 minutes. Yes 20 minutes DURING PRACTICE! Let me ask you coaches: what happens to your practice when you step away for 20 minutes? Does it skip a beat?
With the organization and the staff in Frankfort, I must say that I am not surprised that the road to the Southwest Suburban Conference Championship goes through EAST... and I believe it will for a long time.

Building a Program

As a new head coach in a program that has struggled for 10 years, I think often about program building. You know, the little things you do to increase your chances of being good year after year. Over the past year, I worked so hard on building strength and raising excitement around the program that I began to feel very good about what I was doing. I really felt like I was caring for the well being of our football community as a whole. However, I was not giving enough time and attention to the youth football community.
I was most harshly reminded of this in the spring when I went to visit a friend of mine at Joliet Township High School (JT). Jason Aubry had set up a free football clinic for his youth football coaches. An idea I thought genius, and the turnout was great. He had coaches in attendance from all 3 youth programs. Jason took over the program there at JT 3 years ago and since has won just 4 games. The toll of losing has left my dear friend tired, yet he continues on his path of good practices, and I am confident (as is he) that his hard work will indeed payoff with wins.
JT had won just 21 games in the 10 years prior to Aubry's arrival and the school plays in one of the toughest public school conferences in the state of Illinois. Many labeled Jason as crazy for even dreaming of taking this job. But the draw of achieving the impossible is exactly what drew Jason to it. It was a group of kids that the entire state had given up on, and Jason was determined to love and care for this program like noone had before.
When I visited this spring I witnessed this first hand. Coach Aubry's entire focus is on CARING for this team. Building young men with character and winning attitudes. Instilling a great work ethic and convincing these young men that they are worth caring for. That they matter.
Very little of Coach Aubry's clinic that day was on X's and O's. It was a morning of building believers out of the youth coaches. By the time they left that day, they were convinced that success was coming to Joliet Township Football. Heck, I was (am) convinced that success is on its way. This is a group of young men working hard, learning the game, and becoming a TEAM. Though I don't claim to know much about coaching, I do know that this is a formula for success.
And that's exactly what Coach Aubry wanted to achieve. He wanted to make a believer out of everyone in that room. If your youth coaches believe these kids are set up for success, the kids will believe it, too. How could I have thought to talk to the kids and forgotten to talk to their coaches? How ignorant of me to think that I'm the only football coach in my community that has an impact on the thoughts and attitudes of his players.
From many of these video shoots I learn X's and O's, from others I pick up program ideas, but from this one I gained wisdom... and a t-shirt.

Atlanta in April

As my brother-in-law and I flew down to Georgia for this years Masters, we were painfully longing for the warmth of the sun. Winters in Illinois, and the rest of the North for that matter, are torturous. See, even we Illinoisans normally think of winter as a December through February deal. Those are winter months right? And those months I can push through. But by the time April rolls around, and the temperatures are still struggling to break 50 degrees, I start getting salty. I begin dreaming for 65 and sunny.
So as Todd (thats the brother-in-law) and I walk out of the Atlanta airport, I am overcome with joy. Warmth! I could hardly breathe deep enough. It must have been 68 degrees outside! We had to get our rental car and head to Norcross, where we had set up a video shoot at Wesleyan High School. Wesleyan had just won the State Championship in 2008 and were the first video shoot we had scheduled for our new website, Chiefpigskin.
As the shuttle dropped us off at our car, Todd and I were frozen in disbelief. Is this heaven? Never before had I been so excited to be given the ultimate retirement car. A white Chrysler Sebring Convertable. The heavens were open and singing for our entire 1 hour, partly cloudly cruise to Wesleyan. All this sound dramatic? It truly was.
So enough of that travel stuff, let's talk football. Nothing could have prepared us for what we were about to see at Wesleyan. It is without a doubt the most beautiful high school I've ever seen. With a large, wideopen campus spreadout upon acres of finely groomed landscape. Wesleyan's facilities were college quality. It's no wonder that tuition for a single high school student runs over $15,000 per year.
Head Coach Franklin Pridgeon met us with a smile, then kindly and humbly showed us around his campus. Over and over as Todd and I gawked over all we were seeing, Coach Pridgeon would talk about how blessed they have been. You could hear the gratitude in his voice. This was a man who loved God, loved his school, and was thankful for his job. Listening to him came easily and I felt myself filming and following as a coach being mentored, rather than a camerman shooting footage.
If you haven't done so, watch the Wesleyan HS tour. The place is awesome. Additionally, you've got to watch how Coach Pridgeon runs his 50 defense. This is some dynamic stuff. I've already incorporated the use of a tilted strong side tackle. I'm excited that this might help our ability to slow down the trap.
Next stop for me, Joliet Township High School. Where my good friend Jason Aubry has been pouring himself into turning a program around.

By the way, the Masters was incredible.