MACON — The cycle of high school football never stops.
Play, wash, review, prepare, practice, repeat. The pattern remains largely the same for every team throughout the 11 to 12 weeks that make up the regular season for teams in the state of Mississippi.
But while the bright lights of Friday night action often attract the most attention, a team’s success usually can be traced to the work it does preparing for the next opponent. These days, “download” has found its place in the weekly chores coaches have to tackle. They send film from their games to their next opponent and obtain films back so they can set the stage for a busy Sunday filled with watching video.
“When you watch film, you look for tendencies, what they like to do, and who is their best player,” Noxubee County coach Tyrone Shorter said. “I think we do a good job. There have been times we have stayed up here six or seven hours preparing for a playoff game.”
Shorter has been coaching at Noxubee County High for 18 years. In that time, he said he has logged hundreds of miles and traveled as many as three hours to exchange videotapes of game film with opposing coaches.
These days, he said software like Hudl, a tool for coaches and players to analyze game footage, allows coaches to exchange footage electronically instead of driving to exchange physical tapes. Many of the high school football coaches in the Greater Golden Triangle area said they use Hudl to break down opponents to help them prepare for the next game. The software is used in other sports as well.
Without the driving, there still is a lot for coaches to do to prep. Shorter said he and his coaching staff meet every Sunday for three to seven hours to dissect the next matchup.
Importance of a close staff
Other head coaches said they follow a similar plan and take a good chunk of Sunday and hunker down with their assistant coaches in an attempt to locate tendencies and to devise a winning strategy for the next week.
“You have to have some camaraderie on your coaching staff,” New Hope High football coach Kris Pickle said. “If you don’t, it is going to be a miserable season.”
On Fridays when his team plays at home, Pickle said he and his coaches usually will go to someone’s house, or to the home of Gail and Dean Stevens or Ashley and Katie Stevens to share a meal. He said that time helps build camaraderie and trust on a coaching staff, which is essential because everyone spend so much time together and has to trust that each member is doing their part to keep the program moving forward.
“We always want to make sure everybody on the staff has an opinion and their opinion is heard,” Pickle said. “I have always been told seven eyes are better than one eye. Seven opinions are better than one opinion. Just because I may be the head coach doesn’t mean I have all of the answers. If there is a better way to do it, we have to find what the best way to do it is with us.”
Dean and Gail Stevens are the parents of former New Hope High standout Park Stevens, who died July 3, 2013, after his pickup collided into the rear of an 18-wheeler at Egypt Road and U.S. Highway 45A in Chickasaw County.
After eating, Pickle said he might watch a little film while he is finishing the team’s laundry, but the true film study for the following week doesn’t begin until Sunday. Like Shorter, Pickle said he and his staff will work seven or eight hours to analyze the previous week and to produce a game plan for the next team.
Responsibilities of a head coach
Pickle, who is in his second year as head coach at New Hope, said he didn’t realize when he was an assistant coach how everything fell back to the head coach when something went wrong. After one season as head coach at Morton High and now in his second season in Lowndes County, Pickle understands how a head coach has to set the tone and be organized so his program is making the best use of its time.
“I think trust is the most important thing. If you don’t have trust in your coaches and in your coaching staff, you will kill yourself as a head coach,” Pickle said. “You will be trying to do everything. You can’t be successful at a 5A school or a 6A school. You might be able to do it at a 1A or a 2A school where you don’t have as many kids to deal with, but when you’re talking about 250 or 260 kids to deal with in grades seven through 12, you have to have some trust in those (other coaches).”
Pickle said it all starts with having a plan and being organized. He said the coaches have to know what it is expected and how things operate so everyone knows up front what they are getting into.
“We always say we don’t want clock watchers, we want workers,” Pickle said.
Shorter agrees and said Noxubee County splits up into offensive and defensive groups to watch game film on Sundays. He said he will watch the film again when the team breaks into groups. Finally, all of the coaches will get back together to assemble the game plan. As he goes, Shorter said he writes formations and patterns down so he can talk to his coaches about them.
When they’re finished, Shorter said the coaches will cut up parts of the game they have analyzed and produce a scouting report that is printed out and given to each player. That’s when the process of implementing that plan begins until the following weekend, when it begins again.
“A lot of people don’t realize how time consuming coaching is,” Shorter said. “It isn’t just going on the field. You have to prepare. I think coaching staffs that prepare and get their kids ready, you will see the success.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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