Late October Check-In: It's Been a Long One
Long time no see.
The season leaves me little to no time for writing. Or sleeping.
It's been a long season over here, for better and for worse. We got out to a 4-1 start beating almost all of the non-district opponents that beat us last year. The district schedule has been tough sledding. We play in a league with a few of the best teams in the state (two of them ranked in the top ten in Texas), so there is little room for error. We didn't get it done in a couple of key league games. As a result, we will end our season in 2 weeks in the regular season finale.
As hard as it has been as a team, it's been a lot of turmoil on the defensive side. Key injuries and a lack of 4-quarter physicality have haunted us. We are an offseason or two away from galvanizing the mental and physical wherewithal to play defense at a high level. The offense has been stellar, lighting up opponents all year. But the defense has not matched it, and I have to work to improve that. I also have to say, I've been in the profession long enough to know that defensive culture takes some time to build. As a first-time coordinator, I have taken my lumps and felt the demoralizing feeling of watching your stud QB and receivers light up the scoreboard while you struggle to keep games from becoming shootouts.
I've also gotten the pleasure of, for the first time, seeing press criticism of the defense, as well as commentors online calling for the head of the HP Defensive Coordinator, bemoaning how awful of a coach he must be. Rite of passage I suppose. I mean, are you even really a coach in Texas if an online comment section hasn't called for you to be fired? Seriously though, mentally and emotionally it can be a lot. But the "men in the arena" have to press on, ignoring the noise made by those who will never know the inside of a program.
The fact is, the selfless, pain-resistant, grittiness required to play good defense has to be built from the bottom up, and is constructed not during the season, but in the Dog Days of January-June, in the early mornings, the mat drills, the weight maxes, the discipline drills, the extra lifts, and the relentless reinforcing of program standards. There just isn't another way.
The thing about being a metro-area 2A school is that we lack the fundamental structure of the small/rural towns that make up most of our competition. We don't have a lot of farm kids, or 2nd-3rd generation Highland Park football players, and we have transfers from all over the Amarillo metro. The down-home, "One Town/One School" culture simply can't look the same in our case. So we have unique challenges. However, we also have unique advantages, in that our growing success can attract transfers from large metro schools, an advantage rural towns lack (because we ALREADY HAVE SCHOOL CHOICE IN TEXAS, contrary to what the Governor says).
All that said, I enter the final 2 weeks of the season with a particular mentality. Every coach wants to make it to the postseason, but we also have to guard against outcome-oriented thinking that leads to "checking out," under the delusion that the games don't matter. My mentality is to put on the best show possible for our Senior Night this week, and celebrate the record breaking performances these seniors have given us. These guys are the foundation of the success to come, and they deserve a special week and a special night. After that, the goal is to go finish the season with a win on the road. Splitting our last 2 games of the year will earn us a 5-5 record, the first non-losing season here since 2015. If we win the last 2, it will be the first winning season since '15, and ties the highest win total since '13.
As far as I am concerned, as we build this program, there is A LOT for us to play for. At the risk of redundancy, this has been the trajectory before and since our arrival as a staff:
2020: (2-8)
2021: (0-10)
----Our Staff Arrives----
2022: (3-8)
2023 (4-4 as of Week 8)
So, whether we go 5-5 or 6-4, there is no denying the trajectory, playoffs or not. And as program builders, we have to see that clearly, and embrace the next phase of our build; a phase that will include a nutrition program and a revised offseason regimen that hammers away at mental & physical toughness, durability, and "DYJ" mentality. Our freshmen and sophomores are likewise buying in and embracing the rebuild (JV has tripled its win total from last season). The pieces are there in the next few classes for us to play really good football, even as bi-annual UIL realignment is certain to alter our league for the next two years. We are also working on further developing the Middle School program, as well as pre-athletics programs for our 5th & 6th graders.
I guess my main point in sharing all of this is to say that a program build is hard. We don't get a conveyor belt of 6', 200 pound ready-made football gods. We don't have a "One Town/One School" culture to draw from. We have to develop it. All of it. And as much of a roller coaster ride this year has been, I'm ready to hit these last two weeks with intensity, because progress is the name of the game.
Coaches out there for whom the postseason isn't in the cards, I encourage you to do the same. For your seniors and for your progress as a program, finish strong, and develop the vision for the 9 months ahead.
I leave you with one of my all-time favorite quotes.
"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self."
-Hemingway
