By Staff
Coaching Management, 9.4, May 2001, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/cm/cm0904/qaawrey.htm
Once Randy Awrey has learned the lay of the land, look out. After going 4-6 in his first season as Head Football Coach at Saginaw Valley State University, Awrey led the Cardinals to a 9-3 record in 2000, including a share of the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference title and the Michigan school’s first NCAA Division II football playoff bid.
Awrey had a similar track record at his two previous coaching stops. After going 4-6 in his first year at Division III Lakeland College (1994), he compiled a 25-5 mark in his final three seasons, highlighted by a perfect 10-0 season in 1997 and two Illini-Badger Conference crowns. In his first stint as a head football coach, at then-Division III Kentucky Wesleyan College, Awrey went 0-10 in his inaugural campaign (1990), but eventually led the school to its first winning season since the program was revived in 1983.
A former Assistant Football Coach and Head Track and Field Coach at both St. Lawrence University and Michigan Tech University, Awrey is a 1978 graduate of Northern Michigan University where he was a four-year starter on the football team, first as a defensive back, then as a running back. In 1975, he was named the MVP of the NCAA Division II championship game after helping the Wildcats to a 16-14 win over Western Kentucky.
CM: How meaningful was it to win a league title and reach the Division II playoffs last year?
Awrey: It was extremely exciting for our team and our university because SVSU had never made the NCAA playoffs before and hadn’t won a league title since 1984. It was especially rewarding for the seniors—it was a great way for them to finish their careers here.
Your team came from behind in five of your victories. How were you able to mount so many comeback wins?
I really believe it was due to the character of the young men we were coaching. This was a never-quit, highly competitive team. We also had great chemistry—the kind of chemistry each coach in the country always tries to find. When you have good people who work hard and are competitors, I think you can win a lot of games.
How do you keep your players’ confidence up when you find yourself behind?
I think that really comes from keeping our confidence up as coaches. There was never a moment in any game when I felt we were out of it. There’s always a chance to win, and with our style of offense—we’re very wide open, we throw the football very well, and we have a lot of game-breaking type of offensive players—we can score at any moment.
So, you just continually coach, and you keep encouraging your players. And if you keep after it, your players will keep that same intensity up throughout the game.
But the other key factor probably was the things we did in the offseason. It really began in our offseason weight training and conditioning programs. We started with lots of endurance-type running in January and February, then worked it down to speed running. We wanted to be in better shape than our opponents, so when the game came to the fourth quarter, we would be able to pull things out.
We also had people talk to our team about proper nutrition. We body-fat tested all of our big guys and tried to get their body-fat percentages down. We did everything naturally. We talked to them about the right ways to eat—what to eat, how to eat, that type of thing.
We also focused on their academics. We designed a study hall with tutors to help the guys make sure they were getting through their classes. We geared the whole program to making them better athletes and healthier people.
Part of the result was that they felt good about themselves when they got to camp in August. Their grades were up. They were feeling healthier and fitter. Their body-fat percentages were lower. When you have a better-conditioned person who’s more confident in himself because he’s had success throughout the past winter and spring, he’s ready to go. And it really worked, if you look at what happened in the fall.
Did the players buy into these new programs quickly or did it take time?
It took some time. My first year here, we were 4-6. We took over a program that was very, very successful and had won a lot of games. They were 9-2 the previous two years, and it’s very difficult to come in and take over for a coach who was very well known, well liked, and successful. It was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done as a coach.
Was it difficult to help the players through that kind of season while you were facing your own challenges?
I think, as a coach, you have to keep your personal feelings out of it and understand that these are kids. They’re 18- to 22-year-olds and you’re trying to help them succeed in their lives, but you have to convince them of that.
I met with everybody on the team numerous times throughout that first year, and we tried to set goals and talked about priorities in their lives. We discussed what they wanted to achieve a year from now and five years from now, and how we as a coaching staff could help them achieve those goals. That was the approach we took, but everything takes time. Chemistry doesn’t develop overnight, because it involves relationships, and relationships take time. The more time you’re working together, the better the relationship becomes. So each year, we’re looking forward to the next season, because it’s just going to get better and better.
Was there a certain point when you felt the team turned a corner?
I think it was at the end of my first year here. We didn’t play well at the beginning of that season, but the last half of the year we played great football. We lost a couple of close ones, but we won some, too—you could feel things changing. Then, in the offseason, things started to come together. When we went into the fall, you could tell from day one that it was a whole different thing because we had finally worked together for a significant period of time.
How did your experience at Kentucky Wesleyan compare?
The biggest difference was that when I came in and installed all this at Kentucky Wesleyan, they were a little more eager to employ it because they had not won at all before. Any change meant excitement to them. When we came here and did the same type of things, the question in the players’ minds was, “Why are you changing things?”
I don’t believe in changing things just to change them, but I believe you have to do what you do best. And that’s what we did when we came in as a staff. If you believe in it, the kids will believe in it, and it will be successful. If you don’t believe in it, or you’re not sure, it’s not going to work.
The bottom line is you have to have players who believe in what you’re doing and have the right kind of character. So when we go out and recruit, that’s what we’re recruiting for. I can go out and find millions of athletes. But I want athletes who are students, have character, and want to do the things we’re asking them to do.
Great athletes don’t necessarily mean you’re going to win. It takes time to go out there and find the kind of kids who fit into your style of football and what you’re expecting.
Was it difficult to stay confident in what you were doing those first two years at Kentucky Wesleyan?
The biggest difficulty for me there was that it was my first head coaching job in football. For those first couple of years you start to question, “Am I doing the right thing?” But I really believed in my heart that I was doing the right things, and that it would turn around if I hung in there long enough. And things did finally start clicking—the last couple of years there, it was a blast.
Why did you leave Kentucky Wesleyan?
It’s almost sad in a way to leave a place after you get it to that point. But new challenges and opportunities can make you want to move on in life. So when I felt I had brought Kentucky Wesleyan as far as I could bring it, I went over to Lakeland. At Lakeland, we reached a point where we were 25-5 in three years and I felt it was time for another challenge.
Were you looking for a different kind of challenge when you went to Saginaw Valley?
I was looking for a place where I felt that I could actually develop a national-caliber team. At Lakeland, we won a lot of games, but we couldn’t get into the national playoffs. We were 10-0 one year and didn’t get in. That was a tragedy because that was a great football team. And I’ll go to my grave saying that team could have been a national championship team.
At that point, I decided it was time to look to a new place. And my next challenge was: Can I, as a head coach with the philosophies and the organization that I’ve been using, take a team to the national playoffs? That was my next goal.
So what are the goals from here?
The goal is to continue. We liked going to the playoffs. We lost in the first round at Bloomsburg, which was a very good football team, but with five minutes to go it was a tie ball game. Bloomsburg went all the way to the final game, where they were beat by Delta State.
So I think our guys are hungry. They got a taste of what it was like and it was fun. Everybody here loved it, so we want to do it again. Obviously, our goals are to go further in the playoffs.
Has your experience as Head Track and Field Coach at St. Lawrence helped you as a football coach?
It definitely helped because it gave me coaching experience at a national-caliber level. I was there four years and we won the state championship every year. We were national runners-up twice, once we were third, and once we were sixth. Getting to coach at the national level is pretty cool. Your confidence grows when you’re second in the nation two years in a row. Plus working with track kids means you’re working with probably 25 different types of personalities, from pole vaulters to sprinters to distance runners. And if you want to talk about somebody who has to be organized, be a track coach and try to run a home meet. So it definitely helped my organizational skills.
You guide a pretty high-powered offense. What is your philosophy on offensive strategy?
I believe in opening the game up. I believe in getting the football in the air and spreading people out with the four-wide one-back set and the three-wide one-back set. I like open offenses and I like to outscore people.
I understand that a 48-46 ball game is going to be more fun and you’re going to put a lot more people in the stands than a 3-0 game. So you might say we put more into our offense than our defense. We don’t slight our defense, but we definitely want to be an offensive team. That’s just a philosophy that comes from many years ago when I was in Kentucky. In today’s football, with the way the rules read, offense has an advantage, I believe.