Part of the Team

Recently, I was asked if we cut players. That question started me thinking...

I know that as a football coach, I am biased. I admit to that fact. However, in my humble and biased opinion, football is a little different than 'most' other prep sports. It is different in that it has room for practically everyone. Practically...

We need quick, fast guys regardless of physical size. We need tall guys. We need strong guys. We need smart guys, but not everyone playing football has to be an honor student. We need BIG guys. We can even be Co-Ed. We love athletic guys but there's room for guys who just hustle. On a football team, there's room for so many different types of kids.

The thing is, not everyone is a starter, and of course everyone wants to start on gameday. However, that's kind of the point that I want to address... our perspective about what's important about football. It's easy to think that it's all about Gameday, but let's really look at it.

We have six guaranteed games. Just six. We play four quarters each game for a grand total of 24 quarters. Each quarter is 10 mins long for a total of 240 minutes. That's a grand total of 4 hours of football for the season. That's clock time, the amount of time that actual game play occurs is much smaller than that.

So to sum it up, we have just 6 days where we play a game and the actual games last only 4 total hours FOR THE YEAR. What does that tell us?

It tells us that Football is actually played at PRACTICE. Practice is where we learn the game, where we develop our skills, where we make friends, make family, make our real memories.

Both of my boys play college ball and have played in a lot of games over the years, but when we sit around and talk football it's never really about game day. It's about PRACTICE. It's about Vlad and Prent and RaShaun and Isiah, and Ed, and Trey. It's about Coach Dubose, and Mason, and McMullens. It's about what happened in the locker room, on the practice field, or on the bus back from the game. You see, football isn't a game, it's an experience. It's a journey that these players take together. Some are starters, some aren't, but they are all Dragons... and that means something.

I have coached for some time now and I remember a great deal of the kids that have come through. I remember the LB who hit like a truck, Zaza who was just fast, Vlad who never missed a block, and I still talk about them. However, there are a couple of kids that I remember, kids that never started a day in their lives, and they were so much more impressive.

Andrew Kidd was listed as a WR and CB for us. He was not really either of those things. He couldn't catch, he couldn't run, and he was 135lbs as a senior. The truth is that Kidd never had any aspirations of starting. Yet, Kidd never missed a practice. He did every drill, ran every sprint, he was the first one there and the last one to leave... knowing that his number would never be called.

Why? I asked myself that question several times and decided that Kidd knew something that I didn't. He knew that there was more to football than Gameday. He saw something greater in football than the lights and the fans. He saw a place to belong. He was there because he wanted to be part of the team.

My two boys were starters from day one. Cole started his first varsity game during his 8th grade year. However, anytime I needed to motivate them, encourage them, even push them it was Kidd that I pointed to. Playing sports is not easy under the best of circumstance, but here was a young man who knew he was not going to be the superstar, not going to make the winning pass, catch the td, or even play in the game but still he showed up every day rain or shine, sweating in the heat, shivering in the cold just to be a part of the team. Mr. Kidd was a young man with true character. Mr. Kidd had something that I wanted my boys to have, something I wanted every boy on that team to have.

Most people don't really think about "why" they love football. I'd dare say that most parents don't give it too much consideration either. If they did stop to consider it, I'd hope that they would look beyond Gameday, beyond the lights of Friday Night and really see the experience for what it truly has to offer and to understand that the majority of what it offers is not measured by yards or points. It happens in the weight room and on the beat up practice field where boys learn a million little lessons about life and gather a thousand precious memories to carry along the way. Memories that will bring a smile and probably a tear long after the game has passed them by.

So, do we turn kids away? Obviously, there are logistics to every sport... 110 kids on a football team would be overwhelming to a coaching staff and financially unsustainable for a school.. but my hope is that there is room for everyone who wants to 'be part of the team.'

Coach