That first year as a head coach offers a variety of lessons. Some coaches look back on it fondly, and others recall experiences with a wry grin and a shrug of the shoulders.
“It was extremely stressful,” McMinn Central coach Josh Goodin recalled of the 2009 season. “You go into it not having any kind of clue of what to expect, especially being so young. I was faced with a lot of different challenges and situations that I hadn’t dreamed of. It was fun and it was rewarding, but at the same time I was stressed a good bit of the time.”
Goodin got the job despite having just five years of experience, and he wasn’t hired until June. It left him slightly more than 10 weeks before the Chargers’ 2009 opener.
In his favor, though, the Englewood school returned the bulk of its skill players. For a while they knew the offensive and defensive terminologies better than their new coach and his staff.
Chattanooga Christian’s Barry Loyal had coached in Alabama. His problems were different from Goodin’s because few of his players had played since peewee leagues. He had the experience but was dealing with a program in its first varsity season.
“The kids learned as much as I did about what it takes to play good football every Friday,” Royal said. “You have to play hard, as hard as the other team, and do the little things right. It takes more than going out and working hard. One of the things the older guys realized and changed for this year was the way they prepared in the offseason. They have been working with a sense of urgency.
“There’s no way to be prepared for everything, and we have made some adjustments. We have put some guidelines in place so a continued commitment from the players and parents will be there.”
While many coaches have forsaken team camps and stayed on campus for the two-a-day drills that signal the real beginning of football practice, Loyal and the Chargers traveled to Fort Bluff Camp on Dayton Mountain for three days.
“It was just us and it went great,” he said. “Our guys battled each other and then went to meals or hung out in the dorm. It was good for us.”
Loyal will spend more time this year with the defense after hiring Mike Conner from Trinity Presbyterian in Montgomery, Ala., and turning the spread offense over to him.
Most new coaches stick more in their playbooks than they’ll ever need. Grundy County coach Nick Bryant might have covered the book from front to back, but he was delighted with adept he and his staff got at making adjustments on the fly last fall.
“We got to where we were seeing things we didn’t see early. We got better as coaches, especially on offensive adjustments during the game,” he said. “Overall, it was getting kids in the right places. The kids were high energy, and I think we got better at teaching the kids what we wanted to.”
Grundy County was good enough to reach the playoffs for the first time since 2004 and gave perennial title contender Goodpasture Christian a run for its money before the Yellow Jackets let the upset slip through their fingers.
“We’re definitely better prepared this year,” Bryant said. “We have worked hard to make sure we’ll be able to go as hard in the fourth quarter as the first. We had a better summer program. Our winter and summer workouts were more position- and individual-specific.”
New coaches inevitably have a handful of players who want to see how far they can get in pushing the coaches’ buttons. Goodin said the Chargers found out quickly that “nobody on the staff was going to take too much button-pushing.”
There often are parents who test a coach or suggest that the coach is being unfair.
“You have to deal with the mom or dad that thought you weren’t treating their son fairly and threatened to report you to the principal, the school board or the TSSAA,” Goodin acknowledged. “For a while there, discipline was an issue.”
Every new coach has to learn fast how to deal with a budget.
“I learned a lot about the school budget. You have a feeling that you need more than you can afford, and that’s before you really know you’re out of money,” Goodin said. “I learned pretty quick to get the needs first and then the wants.”
Dealing with the budget was likely the biggest headache for Bryant.
“You have to be careful that you don’t overspend,” he said, “but you also have to have the right equipment for the kids, from getting helmets refurbished to buying replacement shoulder pads. We’re ready to go this year and we have everything in place. Last year we had to do some things at the last minute right before the season opener.”