Category Archives: Coaching

April 20, 2016 · 5:30 PM

Getting Technical

I read an article about a 6’ 8” college basketball player who decided this spring to switch and play football at the same college. The football coaches were working to refine his big man basketball skills toward the goal of being an offensive tackle. It was a very interesting article and kind of reinforced my belief there are certain common physical movements which exist between sports.

The head football coach made a comment that the staff didn’t mind working with such a green athletes because many of their actual football recruits also show up with no, or very little, fundamental technical skill from the high school level. I about choked. It made me mad at first, but then I remembered how many times over the past five or so years I’ve noticed this lack of fundamentals in action at high school football games I’ve watched.

How can this be? Is teaching solid technical proficiency becoming a lost coaching art?

Fundamental technique is the building block on which winning programs are built. In baseball and football coaching, everything, for me, revolved around developing solid technical skills. Being sound technical offensive and defensive linemen allowed us to overcome a general lack of size, speed, and athleticism in order to compete almost every time we stepped on the field.

Years ago, one rival baseball coach asked me once how it was that our kids all seemed to be able to drive the ball on the line to all fields. I told him the truth. I told him we teach front-hand hitting technique and every, single thing we do in practice, in the cage and on the field is geared toward developing a consistent technical swing. He looked at me like I was nuts, shook his head and laughed as he walked back to his dugout.

At football coaching clinics, I always got a kick out of the “progressive” coaches who talked nothing but schemes and theories while laughing behind the old, highly successful coaches who talked about fundamentals and drills and perfection. Simple science.

By Snyder, Frank R. Flickr: Miami U. Libraries - Digital Collections [No restrictions or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

By Snyder, Frank R. Flickr: Miami U. Libraries – Digital Collections [No restrictions or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Perhaps it is too simple for some to understand.

It is not magic.

It is not simply innate ability.

It is hard work. And teaching. And holding the line. And being strict. And demanding. And sometimes being completely unlikeable to the players.

It is pushing to get better every day.

Technique matters. It’s not sexy or shiny or going to make a big splash, but…

Technique matters.

It gives you an advantage. Good fundamental technique and good preparation give the advantage of an extra step. In sports, even at the lowly high school level, this single step can be the difference between winning and losing. Being fundamentally sound gives your team the edge over an opponent of equal or lesser quality and levels the playing field somewhat against a superior opponent.

Make the commitment. Get technical and get better.

By Royalbroil (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

By Royalbroil (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

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April 14, 2016 · 7:09 PM

Socialing

Athletes are, and should be, held to a higher standard. It is a price to be paid for the opportunity to participate. You, as an athlete, a coach, or a fan, owe the game much, much more than the game will ever owe you. As Coach Lane used to say, “Faith, family, and football is a game we are fortunate enough to be able to play.”

There are few areas where the modern athletes, especially the young, high school athlete, must hold themselves accountable to a higher standard than in the realm of social media. The ability to send our thoughts and ideas into the public realm is greater than it has ever been in the history of mankind. It’s instantaneous. It’s far-reaching. It can be a slippery slope.

Social media is great because it connects us like we have never been connected before and gives us an audience. Social media is bad because it connects us like we have never been connected before and gives us an audience. In short, social media is a double-edged sword. It can been used in a positive manner as easily as it can be used as a negative.

Parents, coaches and administrators need to develop a social media plan and convince players and teammates to abide by the plan. Creating the best tribe possible should be the underlying goal of everything we do as coaches and athletes. Social media is part of being in the tribe. Three things to remember about being a good tribe teammate.

  • What is good for the tribe is good for you too.
  • The jabs you take at the tribe are as damaging and as senseless as punching your own self.
  • Impact your tribe positively with your actions. In Coach Hays words, don’t crap in your own nest.

Social media is permanent. Your post is given a life. Your friends and followers see it. They like it or share it and your post is opened up to all the friends and followers of your friends and followers. The social reach can be extended to layer upon layer upon layer—even if you deleted your original post 30 seconds after posting it. Social media has permanence.

A good guidepost for social media, which is also a good guidepost for general life, is to not say anything to someone on social media or about someone on social media that you would not say if you were standing face to face to them.

Be true.

Be honest.

Be real.

But do it while playing nice.

Use your social media spectrum for good. The Mrs. Coach Hays, in her infinite wisdom on such matters dealing with young people, often reminds me of the credo, “Positive in public, negative on your own time.”

Be who you are, but put your best face toward the rest of humanity.

Finally, as the venerable Coach Melvin Cales used to tell his son and my college roommate, Monty, after Sunday visits to our college town where Coach Cales’s mother lived, “Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want your grandmother to read about in the paper.”

A great lesson to guide your social footprint.

And a great life lesson to boot.

Social wise, my friends. 

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By Ibrahim.ID [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

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March 22, 2016 · 8:26 PM

Coach Wilson

I pulled an old t-shirt from the drawer to wear for our walk last night. It was one brought forth from the deepest, forgotten bottom of my shirt drawer. It brought a smile to my face and unleashed a flood of good memory of my all-time favorite sports mom. Here’s the shirt.

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When the kids were young and we had just moved to town—way before there even was a Coach Hays—we got involved with the local swim club. The future, great sports mom had a son a few years older than my kids, so, our first summer we crossed paths almost every weekend. Apparently, I wore a “Wilson” t-shirt quite often because toward the end of the summer, when we formally met the future great sports mom and her family, she told us a funny story about how she thought my last name was “Wilson” because that was the name on my shirt. We had a great laugh at the time and she continued to call me “Mr. Wilson” for years.

Fast forward to my first year of coaching football and her son is now a high school junior. Naturally, to the great sports mom, my title changed from “Mr. Wilson” to “Coach Wilson”. The name changed but not the ornery twinkle in her eye and smile whenever she called me that.

She was everything a sports mom should be.

  • Supportive of us coaches
  • Supportive of the other players.
  • Her son’s biggest fan, not his agent or his lawyer.
  • Never tried to pave the way to make things easy for her son.
  • Didn’t bring snacks/refreshments with the expectation her son should play because she brought snacks/refreshments.

Most importantly, she realized sports are just sports. She taught and valued the big picture and that there was more to life than a high school athletic career.

She was the kind of person you’d be happy to go out of your way for. Whether it was spending extra time with her son training or practicing or driving four hours after oral surgery in the middle of our family vacation to watch her son play the Kansas Shrine Bowl football game in 110° weather, you’d do it. But, I could never have told her “no” that particular time because she printed my entire family personalized Shrine Bowl t-shirts just so we could be a part of their family cheering section.

She passed away a few years ago. I miss this great sports mom. Whenever I see her son and the wonderful family he and his wife are growing, I am reminded of her joy, her kindness, and her fabulous attitude toward life. This helps fill some of the hole left from losing great people. Over the past several years, two of my favorite sports mothers have died too young. These ladies and the examples they set are greatly missed.

But, most of all, I miss being called Coach Wilson.

 

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February 3, 2016 · 8:25 PM

Under Your Skin

(This is my 350th post on The Coach Hays blog since I first started this dog and pony show in 2009. To celebrate, I thought a proper rant would be fitting. Thanks for reading and I hope I can keep going for at least 350 more.)

What makes a good athlete? What makes a team successful?

It’s about commitment. It’s about grinding through the work and the repetition. It’s the footwork drills. It’s the extra swings. It’s taking the shots after practice or perfecting your jump technique.

It’s going beyond what the practice and game plans say you should do. It is going beyond what your supporters say and further than your biggest detractors could ever dream was possible.

It’s the competitor’s mark to be permanently worn under your skin.

It’s a mark you wear with pride. As an individual. As a competitor. As a group. As a team. As a family.

  • Not a hashtag.
  • Not a poster hanging on the wall.
  • Not a program t-shirt.

The mark of a winner is burned on your heart. It seeps into every nook and cranny of your competitor spirit.

You do the work necessary. And then you do it again.

Look in the mirror. What do you see? If you don’t like the results you are reaping, look at what you are sowing.

  • Are you putting in the work? Input = Output.
  • Are you blaming instead of improving?
  • Talking instead of performing?
  • Whining instead of winning?

If you don’t like where you’re at, then take the steps to move forward. Sow the good seed.

Ask yourself, “Am I along for the ride or am I going to put this team on my shoulders and rise to the top?”

Commit. Improve. Do the work.

Hard work is the magic.

Wear the mark of a competitor. Decide if your mark is a temporary tattoo or if is it written in your marrow.

Be dependable. Be consistent. Be a rock.

Wear your commitment under your skin. As I’ve said before, Be Indelible.

Permanent and unshakeable. 

TLWtattoo

Photo used with permission. #TLW13

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December 30, 2015 · 2:28 PM

Crash Course

Bowl Week. It brings a smile to virtually every football fan’s face.  Four, or more, games a day. Teams and bowl games one has rarely heard of before. A football dream (at least to me).

But Bowl Week is more than just non-stop, sports television excitement. It is a chance for a coach to get a crash course in football. During the course of 10-14 days, a coach can watch and study virtually every offensive scheme out there pitted against virtually every defensive scheme in play.

Bowl Week is an excellent opportunity to expand the knowledge base. I don’t quite invest the time, or experience the temporary thumb paralysis from rewinding and rewinding the video with the remote control, as I used to when I was actively coaching, but I still love to watch these college football matchups in order to learn more about the game.

Most of us have heard the old adage, “If you aren’t getting better, you’re falling behind.”. A big chunk of that getting better occurs in the offseason—even for the coach. The players get better by training, by playing other sports, and working toward being better each and every day. Coaches need to do get better in the offseason also. No, take that back. Coaches don’t need to get better in the offseason, coaches must get better in the offseason. After taking a few weeks off at the end of their team’s season, a coach needs to start the process of self-improvement. Bowl Week gives us that opportunity.

I can watch the fast-break, spread offenses, flexbone veer offenses, two-back sets, one-back sets, empty sets and full-house sets all run in unique ways. I can learn how teams use motion to give the QB a coverage read. I can study what these QBs are reading and learn to recognize calls and route combinations. A good defensive coach learns to watch offenses, identify what they are doing and why, and then incorporate that knowledge into your own defensive scheme.

One of my favorite things is to study blocking schemes of all the offensive philosophies and schemes. Two of our most successful specialized blocking schemes were the reverse blocking and the screen blocking. Both came directly from watching college bowl games. The reverse blocking scheme was taken from Glen Mason’s Minnesota Golden Gophers team in the 2003 Sun Bowl and the screen blocking, if I remember right, was from a mid-2000’s Jim Tressel Ohio State bowl game.

Bowl Week. Watch your favorite teams play as a fan, but watch as many of the other games with the eye of a coach.

Always get better.

Your players need it.

Your players deserve it.

IMG_2636

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December 16, 2015 · 8:42 PM

Get a Grip

Have you signed up for the FREE Baseball Excellence Tip of the Week? No? What’s keeping you? If you are a baseball coach, a baseball parent, or a baseball player, regardless of age (the younger your player, the better actually), get over to their website now and sign up HERE. It’s awesome and you will thank old Coach Hays later. They are my go-to source for teaching the game of baseball.

I have become a lover of Monday mornings. Hate me if you please, but want to guess why? Monday morning is when the email Tip of the Week arrives from Baseball Excellence. See, what have I been telling you? Baseball makes life better.

This past Monday’s tip was a topic near and dear to my heart…gripping a baseball bat. It taught me a thing or two and gave me the idea for a series of blog posts on hitting.

Over the past year, I have watched thousands and thousands of swings from T-ball aged kids up through high school. Over the next few months, I am going to attempt to address some of the issues I consistently saw in these swings. We’ll start at the start and focus on gripping the bat.

Grip

First things first. Take your bat and lay the barrel on the ground in front of you and lean the knob against your body. Reach down, grip the bat and lift the barrel up and out to eye-level. Next, bring the barrel of the bat to your back shoulder and look down at your knuckles. The middle knuckles should be pretty close to being aligned with the middle knuckle of top hand being aligned just below the middle knuckle of the bottom hand. This is a proper grip.

The handle of the bat should be gripped where the fingers join the hand and not in the palm. It doesn’t matter if your young player is 8 or 18, teach this and teach this and demand this from day one. A palm-gripped bat is a slow, weak bat. It may work fine in T-ball, it may work fine in coach/machine pitch, and it may get the hitter through their early years of kid-pitch baseball, but it will not work well as they mature. They will struggle to hit the ball as an early teen player and begin to lose interest in the game. I know I’ve said this before, but the numero uno reason kids quit playing baseball as they enter their teenage years is struggling to hit a baseball as pitching gets better. Hitting a baseball is one of the true joys of this great game.

Waggle

Once the proper grip is addressed and practiced over and over with the above grip test drill, the hitter needs to learn to keep this proper grip loose and relaxed. You hit a baseball hard through bat speed, not strength. Bat speed is generated through good mechanics and a short, loose swing. Gripping the bat to tight is a MAJOR problem I see in hitters of all ages. If your hitter has a slow swing that floats through the zone, there is probably a pretty good chance, the hitter has a white-knuckle grip on the bat.

One way to help a hitter keep a loose, relaxed grip on the bat handle is to teach them to waggle, or move, the bat around in their stance. Bat waggles come in all shapes and sizes. It is the one thing every hitter can personalize and develop their own style. Some hitters shake the bat back and forth. Other hitters make small circles. Hall-of-Fame player Cal Ripken, Jr. had the famous clarinet fingers as his waggle. Whatever works to keep the grip on the bat loose and ready to explode.

More on grip and swings in the next post, but for now…some baseball homework!

Homework: Practice grabbing the bat with the proper grip. Get in your batting stance and find a comfortable waggle that allows you to move the bat around while keeping your grip relaxed and loose.

Here are some pictures of my natural bat grip alignments.

Bottom Hand Grip Align

Bottom Hand Grip Alignment

 

Top Hand Grip Align

Top Hand Grip Align

 

Bottom Hand Grip

Bottom Hand Grip (when my top hand is on the bat my bottom thumb rests on the handle.)

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December 7, 2015 · 8:00 PM

Athletic Alphabet

I don’t like playing freshman on the varsity level in high school. Never have liked it, probably never will like it. It’s personal preference backed up by years of personal observation. I’ve too often seen a developmental flatline in the athletes who played varsity as freshman through the rest of their high school career.

Very few of these kids are better all-around varsity players as seniors than they were when first stepped onto a varsity field as a freshman. Their growth curve as an athlete always seems to stagnate in comparison to their classmates who didn’t start playing varsity until a year or two later.

Why?

I don’t really know for sure.

Maybe it’s mental. Perhaps the athlete consciously or unconsciously feels they have achieved their destination and don’t need to get any better. The “I HAVE ARRIVED” syndrome.

Maybe it’s physical. The athlete was an early-bloomer whose later-developing peers were able to surpass them.

Most likely it is theses athletes don’t ever learn their Athletic Alphabet.

Huh?

The Athletic Alphabet is the collection of basic things an athlete needs to learn in their sport. Technique, playbook, physical tools, intensity, motivation/drive, execution, experience, plus many other things are the collected in the alphabet.

I am a much better developmental coach than I could ever be as a varsity head coach. My strength was in the development of athletes by making the athletes realize they need to get better every day. When the athlete would achieve their goaI, I would pat them on the back and then turn up the pressure with a new, more loftier, goal.

I tried to get them to understand the importance of a step by step approach to being a competitor AND pounding it into their young, teenage heads this step by step approach never stops. There is always someone out there better than you are. Never be satisfied being the best on your team or in your town.

The alphabet analogy came early in my coaching career. We were coming back from a dismal freshman football performance. I was not a happy camper on the bus. I challenged the players to invest in learning the things they needed to learn to play high school football. Learn their job on every play and learn how to do that job correctly with the techniques we developed through effort every day in practice and drills.

I told them their middle school football experience taught them only the letters A, B, and C. They needed to start learning more letters because what the hell could you spell with only an “A”, a “B”, and a “C”?

Cab. That’s it…one word! Cab.

You can’t get very far in life knowing only the word, “cab”, can you?  

Even if that one word or that one thing you can currently do is pretty damn good, it is not nearly good enough. If you learn how to use all 26 letters in the alphabet, though, you can make any word. Armed with the whole A thru Z in your arsenal, you can create eloquent sentences and communicate effectively with others.

As an athlete, you need to learn, develop and master the basics of a sport before you can be highly competitive at that sport. In sports, you need the whole Athletic Alphabet to fill your potential.

Don’t be satisfied.

Don’t settle for someone just giving you a spot on the hill. Strive (and do the requisite work) to be KING OF THE HILL.

There is no such thing as “good enough”.

The ultimate competition is with yourself.

There is only you and your potential.

Never stop getting better.

photo (12)

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November 12, 2015 · 7:25 PM

Over. Done With. Gone.

Logically, our high school football season would end either when we lost our playoff game or we failed to make the playoffs. Makes sense, right?

Game over, mope around a couple of days, check in equipment, and say those awful goodbyes to senior young men who will never play organized football again. Over. Done with. Gone.

But that’s never the way it happened. Never.

Sure, we’d do all the stuff listed above. Plus, we’d have the requisite end-of-the-season banquet where I’d have to fake-smile my way through the whole ordeal because all I could think about were my failures as a coach that season (Although the player-produced highlight videos were always cool, no matter how few highlights we may have actually produced on the field that year.).

Even then, the season was never really over for me until the last game, the 4A state championship, was played. Somebody in 4A was still playing AND it wasn’t me. That was tough to let go. People still playing when I was not ready to be done. 

Until the point of the finality of nobody else playing, I was mired in the reality of our failure. I slept poorly, I worked poorly, and if you take a vote, I was probably a pretty crappy person to be around. The majority of my waking thoughts dwelt on what we did wrong and what we needed to do to get better.

Once the state title was safely in the books, I relaxed. I started to think optimistically about next year. I started to prepare winter, spring, and summer weight workouts with a hopeful smile on my face.

Did I say I relaxed? Well, apparently, when I relaxed at the end of the season, so did my immune system. About every year, come late November, I would get a God-awful, upper respiratory infection which made my life miserable right up to Christmas. I spent a month every postseason hacking and coughing my way through life. So much for optimism?

Coaching is a weird thing. It gets in your head and worms its way into the marrow of your bones. There are bad things I really don’t miss in the least of which I could rant for hours upon. But the good things and great memories far outweighed the bad and I miss those things dearly. These good things are the things which keep people coaching sports year after year.

Not money, not glory, not the fancy headsets, but the pure joy of competing and coaching young people.

But…as the great Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”

Putting football things on the shelf.

The pain of letting a season go. The pain of telling those seniors goodbye.

The bumps from slipping back into a normal family life.

Is everyone finally done playing?

Game over. Back to life.

Over. Done with. Gone.

photo (2)

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October 29, 2015 · 6:21 PM

The Work Necessary

The Kansas City Royals are 2015 American League Champions!

The Boys in Blue are in the World Series against the New York Mets!

But a weird thing happened the morning after they won the ALCS over Toronto. Instead of waking up 100% joyful and ready to roll for the Series, I woke up thinking about two plays from ALCS Game 6 and how these two plays spotlight the value of coaches doing the work necessary for their players.

  1. When Alex Rios stole second base against David Price, a left-handed pitcher who allows unbelievably few stolen bases when he is on the mound.
  2. When Lorenzo Cain scored the game-winning run from first base on Eric Hosmer’s double down the right field line.

Both plays, at face value, look totally like big plays made through the exceptional speed and athleticism of those two athletes. But if you look closer, listen to the announcer comments, and the postgame interviews of players and coaches, you begin to see a whole different story.

True, Alex Rios and Lorenzo Cain are two incredibly gifted athletes but that is not what gave them the advantage and confidence to execute those clutch plays on one of the biggest stages of their sport.

What gave both players the edge was the hard work and analysis of the coaches and advanced scouting department.

Yeah. Coaching matters, scouting matters, preparation matters. Hard work IS the magic. Although both plays look to be just a couple of plays of guys running, the amount of time and effort—film study, the scouting report from the scouts following the Blue Jays for the past few months, transfer of that information to the player—are staggering.

Case One – Rios steals second base on a jump he takes off of the first movement home by David Price. Price is difficult to steal on. He’s left handed and although he doesn’t have a great move, he has a quick slide-step delivery which makes it hard for the runner to get an aggressive lead or jump. Scouting appears to have picked up on a tendency for him to sometimes forget about the runner and not give him a “look” when he’s going to pitch the ball to his catcher. For several pitches, he peeks to Rios before delivery to home. On this particular pitch, he doesn’t peek or look to first base and goes straight home, Rios runs on Price’s first movement and is safe with a stolen base–the VERY FIRST stolen base allowed by David Price ALL YEAR. Rios did not end up scoring, but it was a blow to the confidence level of the Blue Jays and added to the pile of things they had to think about.

Scouting, picking up on tendencies, AND being able to relay those details to the player = Makes the game looks easy.

http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/28898650/v525581583

Case Two – Royals third base coach Mike Jirshele and the scouts studied Toronto’s exceptional right fielder, Jose Bautista. They noticed he often fields a ball down the right field line and spins to throw the ball by turning his back toward the infield instead of opening up frontside where he would be able to see the infield all the time. They also noticed he almost always wheels to the blindside and throws the relay to the shortstop positioned around second base.

Coach Jirshele planned on taking advantage of this if, and when, the situation arose. Well, it arose. In fact not only were the players coached this during practices and meetings, but they were given a refresher before game six AND Coach Jirshelle revisited this with Cain and Hosmer BEFORE the inning even started since they were due to bat.

http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/135309324/v525692683

Preparation works.

As a coach, when you watch hours and hours of film or live action, you begin to see patterns. When you rewind and watch a play over and over a dozen times or more, the structure patterns emerge. These patterns become tendencies when put together and analyzed.

  • Tendencies allow a coach to focus preparation.
  • Tendencies allow a coach to focus teaching.
  • Tendencies allow a coach to give his players an edge.

The word “Coach” must be used as a verb, rather than just as a noun. 

As a coach, do the work necessary to put your team in a position to succeed.

Hard work is the magic.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

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October 12, 2015 · 8:21 PM

How In The World…?

Another DAVID AND GOLIATH post on one of my favorite football coaching memories.

I learned a valuable lesson about succeeding as the underdog early in my football coaching career. I learned this from our offensive coordinator at the time, Coach Dail Smith. He didn’t sit me down and explain this lesson. It didn’t pop into my head like a light bulb of understanding. I learned this valuable lesson from a short pre-game talk at the 50-yard line of Otto Unruh Stadium with the head coach of our most bitter rival, the Marysville Bulldogs.

As the lowest coach on our program’s coaching totem pole, it was my job to remember to get the VHS trade scout tapes from the equipment box and return them to the opposing coach before the game. (Yes, back in the dark ages, the upcoming opposing coaches would meet on Saturday morning and trade game tapes from the night before and the week before. I imagine the HUDL online system is golden compared to VHS trade tapes.)

Well, I ran the Marysville tapes out to midfield to give back to Coach Warner, who I knew a bit from coaching baseball. I handed him the tapes and said hello. He takes the tapes, smiles and asks, “How in the world do you get high school kids to learn all those plays?”

I said, “Huh?”

“Your playbook must be four inches thick. How do you guys do it?”

“What do you mean?”

“When I charted your plays from these past two games,” he said, handing me our two VHS tapes. “I counted 127 different plays. How in the world…?”

I just shrugged my shoulders and bit my lip to keep from breaking out into a fit of laughter. “I don’t know, coach. I guess our kids are awesome or something.” I told him good luck and ran to our sidelines laughing like a hyena all the way.

Now, I know our kids. They are awesome kids. But they aren’t that awesome (or quite that smart). 127 plays? I still laugh about that to this day and it’s still one of my favorite memories—and coaching lessons.

Simple is better, even if it looks like a Chinese fire drill.

Coach Smith designed an offense to look and act like this big 127 separate play chaotic monster. But, in all actuality, it was a very simple, multiple-look offense. An offense which exploited the best things we did while trying to mask the things we didn’t do well.

Again, David using his advantages to compete against Goliath instead of entering into a disadvantageous matchup.

Well, you may be wondering by now how many plays Coach Smith did have in his playbook. First, I don’t think he ever made a real playbook or did so willingly. But he did scratch out the basics.

The numbers?

We had about 6-8 running plays and a handful of passing plays.

We taught the kids their job on these 15 or so plays until they knew what they were supposed to do like clockwork. Then we ran those plays out of 27 different formations we had that year. And every kid could go to those formations in their sleep because we drilled and drilled and drilled those formations in summer camp and two-a-days until they were blue in the face.

So, when our kids learned their jobs on those 15 plays and compound it with all those formations, I am sure our offense looked like this massive, complex gargantuan playbook. Something that made our opponents spend hours of scouting and practice time covering the hundreds of plays.

Using our tools to be the best we could be.

Just like David against Goliath.

Coach Smith was a wily, old fox, wasn’t he?

 

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