What it means to be a JV Football Player
The St. Ignatius JV Wildcats ended their season 4–3–1. Not a bad record for my rookie head coaching season (I don’t want to talk about the tie). Bruises were had. Memories were made. Lessons were learned. I hope every guy on that team had as much fun playing as I did coaching.
I got into coaching initially to do some volunteer work in a new community. Maybe set up some cones for drills. I never thought I’d be the one drafting defensive strategies late on a Sunday night, or making decisions on whether or not to go for 2 as a head coach. I’m not one who typically takes on that much responsibility. I don’t even own a plant. But sometimes that’s how life works.
Coaching football, it turns out, is a lot more challenging than I thought it would be. It requires a lot of preparation, focus and energy, but part of the reason it’s hard to coach is the fact that it is not easy to play.
Football is a physically brutal game, and the key to success is counterintuitive to every survival instinct you have.
Here’s a large man charging at you at top speed. Go run into him as hard as you can.
That’s a hard skill to teach, but the guys on our team made it easy. From Day 1 they believed in themselves. They trusted the fundamentals we taught, and even though they were consistently squaring off against bigger opponents, they never played small.
Over the course of the season the guys learned how to be tough, and how to tell the difference between pain and injury. By the end of the season each one of them was literally wearing bruises for the others, like the stupid eyeblack they smeared all over their faces before games. That’s a key trait inherent in any good football team (sacrificing for your teammates, not the eyeblack).
Football also forces you into situations where you have to make incredibly complex decisions in a split second.
It’s 3rd and 7 on your own 35. The offense comes out in an open trips shotgun formation. You’re a cornerback playing catch coverage in a quarters zone defense. At the snap of the ball, the wideout to your side takes 3 hard steps at you and then cuts sharply towards the middle of the field. From there you’re off to the races, and everything happens in warp speed. Is that a crack block or a slant route? Is there another receiver coming into your zone? Where are your linebackers? Where are your safeties? What is the offensive line doing? What’s happening in the backfield? Are they running play action or is this a running play? Who the hell has the ball?
Then once you’ve figured out what’s going on, you need the physical strength and athletic coordination to actually make the play. Keep your head up and hit low. Wrap on contact and keep your legs driving through impact. And for the love of God don’t cross your feet.
All of this requires up a complex combination of psychological, athletic and intellectual skills that not many people possess. Of the 67 guys who showed up for that first week of freshmen tryouts 52% of them washed out by the end of their first season, leaving just 32 guys to make up our JV team.
We called them the Crew of 32 (there were actually only 31 guys but 32 was easier to rhyme) and I can honestly say I wouldn’t have coached for anyone else.
What I learned this season is that coaches are not teachers, or disciplinarians, or even captains.
A coach is a guide.
Someone who shows you not only how to be yourself, but how to be your best self.
We guide the leaders of tomorrow. Young men with the potential to be the very best our society has to offer. Each one the captain of his own destiny.
Life can go a lot of different ways, and there’s a lot you can’t control (like your place on the depth chart or whether or not your job gets shipped overseas). All you can control is the preparation and effort with which you face a challenge.
Believe you can do great things, and remember that belief is needed most when you have every reason to abandon it. It’s easy to be in the locker room with the champagne soaked t-shirts talking about how you always believed you could. It’s much harder to hold that feeling when you’re down 3 games to 1. No one calls on you to do great things, you have to take it.
Before you know it this world will be yours. Don’t make your life small. Don’t ever assume something can’t work or you can’t do something. Before you decide, try. JV football is just the beginning.
