REACTION TO SPRING FOOTBALL

A spring football season will force coaches to adjust their fall calendars.

Coaches Comments: WHAT WAS YOUR INITIAL REACTION TO FOOTBALL GETTING PUSHED TO THE SPRING SEASON? Coaches all across the country are dealing with disruptions to the football schedule. As of press time, several states had already pushed football season into the spring. Minnesota, Colorado, Maryland, California, Illinois, Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia and Washington have already postponed football until 2021. We asked the FNF Coaches audience how they felt about the change.

BY DAN GUTTENPLAN, FNF COACHES EDITOR

JOE BEVIS | @COACHBEVIS Collinsville High (Ill.)

“We ended our summer contact days, and we set up a lifting schedule moving forward. We now have an opportunity to develop ourselves as athletes for another five or six months. It also gives the incoming freshmen time to adapt to the ways of high school long before any competitions start.’’

DAVID BUCHANAN | Mercer County (Ky.) @CHIEFSMOKE10

“I’m not that torn up about the lengthening of the strength and conditioning period, because we lost March, April and May (due to school being out). I think I’ve got a great strength and conditioning coach, Josh Painter. So, for Mercer County, this work with him has been … really, really good for us.”

PAUL BASSLER | Triad High (Ill.) @COACHBASSLER

“We will just flip our fall and spring workouts, so it will not have much of an effect. I was more worried about going into the fall season without having much of a summer. Now we will have more time to regroup going into February.”

MICHAEL HARRISON | Belleville East (Ill.) @BTHSEASTLANCERS

“This will have a major impact on the 2021 seniors who have not already been offered or made decisions on college. So, the time of the year that is usually recruiting season and is normally marked with college coaches visiting the school and doing in-home visits will definitely change this year. However, as long as these schools are still fielding football teams, they will find a way to recruit. We’ve had a lot of communication with college coaches virtually this spring so they have a lot of the players’ information and evaluations already.”

JEFF TURLEY | @MARINAVIKINGSFB Marina High School (Calif.)

“I believe this is the best plan to allow us to hopefully get back to workouts prior to season starting. It’s going to be strange not having double-day practices in August. Knowing a start time that hopefully will work is good. [It is] something to prepare for with less question marks. Bowl games, playoffs, championships, that is January and February football, so I think it will be fun for a season. More weather to work through.”

JONATHAN HADNOTT | Waukegan High (Ill.) @COACHHADNOTT

“We’re basically going to flip our schedule and do (now) what we normally do in February,” Hadnott said. “We’re trying to build our offseason program. We will give them a break to get acclimated to school and start our offseason training soon after.”

ANDY BRUNGARD | Anthony Wayne (Ill.) @AWHSFOOTBALL

“We’re doing walkthroughs and any kind of teaching sessions with everybody having a mask on, and disinfecting equipment after practice. Really following the CDC’s guidelines on what we need to do when we’re here to be doing it right.”

7Things to Consider If the Season Is Postponed Until 2021

One of the unprecedented outcomes of the pandemic is that some states decided to postpone football season until the winter or spring sports calendar. For coaches in the states that did, it presented the challenge of designing a new football calendar.

BY DAN GUTTENPLAN, FNF COACHES

Two of the first states to push back the fall football season until the winter or spring of 2021 were California and Washington.

That left Santa Maria High (Calif.) coach Dan Ellington and many others scrambling to put together a new schedule for the fall season. Ellington’s plan is still fluid, as it’s impossible to predict when the state of California will move into Phase 1. However, he offers these tips to coaches who are facing a new football calendar.

1Work backward from your first game. “Our first game is scheduled for Jan. 6, so that gives the calendar some structure. We don’t know when we’ll be allowed to start practice. That’s up to each district. But if we can work back from Jan. 6, it gives us an idea of when we’ll need to install certain things.”

2Read up on the restrictions in each phase of the return to play. “Our first day of school is Aug. 18, and I’m hoping our district will allow us to start practice. Once we do practice, we’ll be in groups of 10, standing six feet apart. We’ll check temperatures. It’s mostly conditioning in the first phase. Phase 2 will get us in the weight room. Phase 3 will be the official start of practice. Each phase will be at least a few weeks.”

3Do what you can on Zoom meetings. “The kids aren’t always focused on Zoom meetings, so don’t overdo it. We’re planning to run the same schemes, so we can go over those quickly on Zoom. Each position coach takes his position and goes over our scheme on Zoom.”

4Provide a workout schedule. “The biggest challenge for me will be incoming freshmen. They haven’t been in the strength and conditioning program, so we need

Santa Maria (Calif.) coach Dan Ellington

to get detailed information out to them. I send a workout schedule every couple of weeks.”

5Make sure players have the necessary paperwork completed. “The paperwork needs to get done before they can start practicing. It’s easier to get them to do it when they have a deadline. The administrative stuff is the biggest challenge now. Give them deadlines.”

6Send motivational videos. “I use the Marco phone app and do a little motivational speech to keep them encouraged. It’s good for them to see your face and feed off your energy.”

7Stay on top of your players’ academics. “We still have grading periods with distance learning in the fall, so that’s the time to support your players. It’s easier when there’s the motivation of staying eligible to play each week. But they’ll still be getting graded even though football season starts later, so they need to keep their grades up.”

Don’t Break During School Breaks

ONE MAJOR

challenge for teams that will start playing games in January is managing the holiday breaks for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Typically, football season is in full swing over Thanksgiving break, so players stick around. The season is over before Christmas break. Not this year.

“For us, we’re talking about practicing and having our acclimation period during Christmas break,” Ellington said. “I have 94 percent Hispanic kids in school, so a lot of kids travel to Mexico for Christmas. That will be a challenge.”

Ellington will encourage his players to stay at home during Christmas break.

“I’m trying to get kids to stay home and practice,” Ellington said. “Football-wise, it’s a challenge. It’s a tradition for many of our players to visit family in Mexico.”