(Parental Involvement is Crucial in creating a Successful Football Program.)

Having a son or daughter who is successful in a competitive high school athletic program takes support from many ends. Herb Brooks (Coach of the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team) said it best, “you have to sacrifice for the unknown.” With high school athletics, parents have to be willing to make sacrifices to support their kids, who will be making an even bigger sacrifice. In today’s competitive environment, athletes have to be willing to work in the off-season just to keep up with the competition. Student athletes will have to be willing to take part in off-season strength / conditioning programs, spring / summer practices, tournaments and camps for all the different sports that they belong to. It takes a lot of time and effort, but there are many valuable lessons to be learned. This time and effort can also help to keep kids motivated to excel academically.

There are many qualities that can be used to describe someone who is successful; we believe two of these qualities to be attitude and character. The lessons a young man will learn from our program will help him have success in the real world. We are very realistic, only a small percentage of our boys get the opportunity to go beyond high school and play at the next level. What is very realistic is that all of our guys will go somewhere after graduation and display a lot of qualities that they learned from our program. That is why it is very important to teach them how to work and do things the right way.

Our program has three different levels of commitment! The first level of commitment consists of what we do after the season with the remainder of school days. After the season is over we expect our guys to be in a weights class and participate in other sports. As a staff, we feel it is healthy for our guys to get away from us, other than the fact that they need to be working in the weight room to continually try and improve their performance and decrease the risk of injury. We will hold spring ball in May after the end of the spring sports seasons. We usually run practice after school for about 2 hours and 30 minutes Monday through Thursday for two weeks.We will have a parent and player meeting to get everyone organized with summer practices, fundraising, 7 on 7 touraments, spirit pack purchases in the middle of May.

By the end of June we will start the second phase of commitment with our summer football- conditioning program that runs Monday thru Thursday. This is all under our summer football & conditioning practices we run at the school. We will also be competing in 7 on 7 scrimmages through out the summer at different school locations. We mainly do the 7 on 7 scrimmages with the Varsity players. We ask for a higher level of commitment from our guys during this phase because we are so close to competing and really need everyone to be on the same page mentally and physically. We always try and get our summer information out to parents as early as we can so they can try and plan their family vacations around our schedule. We work with other coaches from other sports during the summer time to try and prevent conflicts for our kids. We will install our offensive, defensive, & special team packages during this time period. All gear will be fitted and stored in each player’s locker during this time period as well. Our athletic director and athletic secretary will clear all our athletes during the summer conditioning. It really pays to be around during the summer.

The last phase is the actual season, which starts August 7th this year. Our coaching staff feels it is imperative that all our boys’ make it to every practice. There are many common sense reasons why we ask this of each player, but none more important than understanding proper technique of each position to prevent injury. Our objective is to always be mentally and physically prepared for competition. The only way to reach this goal is to be there everyday. We understand that family emergencies and illness may potentially cause a conflict with practice participation. We feel these situations are acceptable. Medical appointments dealing with an injured player may also fall into practice time when a lot of orthopedic doctors see high school athletes, which is also understandable and something we would want to take care. We feel that appointments to the dentist, dermatologist, etc, should be made before school or during PE or elective classes.

We feel that all our expectations of our program will strengthen your son in many ways. Our program isn’t about being the guy who gets his name in the paper every weekend; it’s about the guy who gives his best effort everyday. Discipline and Commitment are qualities that everyone looks for in someone they want to trust. We want all our student athletes to know what to look for and hope they will be sought out later on in life because they have these qualities.

 

Strength and Conditioning Philosophy

 

Our strength & conditioning philosophy evolves around Olympic lifting, Core Strengthening, Flexibility Work, and Speed & Agility training. We will train our athletes in all three planes of movement Frontal, Sagittal, and Transverse. Our program is designed to improve athletic ability & prevent injuries. We try to turn over every stone possible to physically improve our guy’s and prevent injuries year round. We believe that our program is geared to help out any athlete in any explosive sport.

 

Reason Behind Philosophy

 

1. We will always physically assess our athletes year round to determine their mobility and stability in order to prevent injury and improve performance. We will use the Functional Movement Screen as a primary resource to look at physical movement patterns.

2. Performing Olympic lifts increases explosive power and athleticism. Olympic lifts “Clean & Jerk, Snatch” are multiple joint exercises that strengthen the entire body. Although we may never actually do a full Clean & Jerk or Snatch, we will use simplified varations of the Olympic lifts to prevent injuries and improve performance. Olympic lifting requires driving with the legs and exploding with the hips which is skill specific for a variety of movements in all power sports. We do at least a clean or hang clean each day and two lifts that break down one phase of these lifts each day. We are always pulling weight on the platform. We also pick one leg pressing exercise like Back Squats, Front Squats, or Split Squats to strengthen the hip and leg musculature at each work out.

3. Core Strengthening is important to strengthen the core area “lower back & Abdominal's” to prevent injuries and enable athletes to transfer power from the ground up through there bodies. Core Strength also enables athletes to connect there lower body with there upper body which is vital in all athletics. We work on core strength everyday with a variety of exercises.

4. Improving flexibility is a subject that every coach and trainer we have ever come across is always striving to improve. We attack this with many different approaches. Olympic lifting improves flexibility with each repetition. We stretch both statically & dynamically. We believe in putting our athletes through multiple flexibility progressions, which promotes bending at the hips, knees, and ankles on a weekly basis.

5. Speed & Agility is really the name of the game at any level of athletic competition when you are talking about power sports. This is why we Olympic lift, because it promotes the development of fast twitch fibers. We teach running mechanics year round. We work on change of direction year round as well. We work on speed throughout our off season. We have a whole progression of drills we do with speed ladders, jump ropes, and what we call Florida State change of direction drills. We emphasize to our kids how important it is to learn to run efficiently. We believe movement always wins.

 

Why do you play football?

 

I think it is important to understand the facts when talking about what motivates student-athletes & parents.

 

PROBABILITY......

 

* 1,023,712 approximate number of high school football players each year in the USA

   100%

 

* 61,000 athletes playing football at various levels collegiately in the USA

   6%

 

* 6,000 will be scouted by the NFL

   .06%

 

* 875 will actually sign an NFL contract

   .08%

 

* 300 will make an NFL roster

   .3%

 

* 1,023,412 high school football players will not play in the NFL

   99.7%

 

Make sure everyones priorities are straight. My number one goal as the head football coach at Reed HIgh School is to make our players better people through all the valuable lessons the game of football has to offer. This game has forever made me a better man with everything I have learned as both a player and a coach. When you learn to give to a greater good than yourself, you have learned to be someone who is going to posiitively contribute to society. If and when it is all said and done - your son desires to play college football... our staff will help them find a college home that allows them to fulfill their dreams. Not everyone can play for Nevada, USC and Notre Dame, but there is a place for the young person who just wants to play beyond high school. We will always be honest in our assessment and recommendation to the best level of competition for each student-athlete.