By Jim Catalano
Jim Catalano is an Associate Editor at Coaching Management.
Coaching Management, 9.8, November 2001, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/cm/cm0908/nightlights.htm
Football coaches are creatures of habit. Pregame routines and practice schedules are carefully designed to maintain consistency from day to day. Any disruptions to this carefully orchestrated rhythm are unwelcome.
So, thoughts of veering from the traditional Friday night or Saturday afternoon game times are often as well-received by coaches as a butterfingered quarterback. Yet coaches around the country are breaking free of the Friday-Saturday mold, either by choice or by necessity. From mid-week games scheduled to expand a playoff field to Sunday games at once-in-a-lifetime venues, high school coaches are finding that the road less traveled can be navigated with proper planning.
Despite the apparent hassles of non-traditional game days, most coaches seem to agree that they have their benefits. In Wisconsin, Tuesday night games were the only way the state association could expand the playoff field without extending the season. This also resulted in games being moved to Wednesday or Thursday during the final week of the regular season. Although coaches are generally wary of such moves, the opportunity to put more teams into the playoffs was worth any inconvenience.
"It's the only way the system can work, and it's been a great positive in our state," says Steve Jorgensen, Head Coach at Oshkosh (Wis.) North High School. "We've had two teams that were 5-4 during the regular season win state championships. They had a slow start, got it going at the end of the season, and snowballed through the playoffs. Under the old format, they wouldn't have even qualified."
Sometimes, the setting can provide ample reason to deviate from set scheduling methods. Upstate New York rivals Lansing and Dryden High Schools are less than 20 miles apart, but they moved their game 40 miles north to the Carrier Dome at Syracuse University this past September, even though it meant a rare Sunday game.
"I think the main thing we got out of playing there was a memory for the kids," Lansing Head Coach Ed Redmond says of the season-opening Kickoff Classic at the Carrier Dome, home of the Syracuse Orangemen and the site of the state high school championship games. "As a coach, I wasn't crazy about playing inside on the artificial surface--our kids got a lot of turf burns, plus it was very warm in there. I'd rather have been outside on grass. But when you coach high school sports you have to keep the kids in mind, and playing in the Dome is an experience they'll never forget."
Geneva (N.Y.) High School Coach David Whitcomb agrees. His team opened the 2001 season with a Sunday night game at Syracuse's Coyne Field. "Our Sunday game meant we had a chance to play at a neutral site, and we got to play at a nice place--Coyne Field in Syracuse," Whitcomb says. "Would I do it again? Sure, but not two or three times in the same season. It gave us a couple of extra days to prepare, but it also shorted us in the next week."
Game Prep
As Whitcomb notes, the occasional Sunday night game will reduce the time available to prepare for the following game, the same way playing a mid-week game will compress your regular practice schedule. Coaches must adjust their planning accordingly in either case.
The most difficult scenario, according to Bruce Rollinson, Head Coach at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, Calif., is playing a Thursday night game after a Saturday night game. "The day before a Thursday game is not simply a walk-through," he says. "If you're on a three-day turnaround, you're going to have to get after it pretty good on Wednesday to be prepared."
At Mesquite (Tex.) High School, Head Coach Steve Bragg also approaches a Thursday game differently from weekend games. "Monday and Tuesday are heavy work days--we practice about two hours and 15 minutes on those days, including special teams work," he says. "Wednesday, we go out in pads and pants for only about 90 minutes. Whereas a lot of teams will do their kicking game the day before the game, we use it as a work day to fine-tune all of our stuff. We also have an athletic period during the school day, so that's when we do all of our team meetings and special teams planning, and after school we work on offense and defense with the players."
Rollinson also makes up for the short week by beginning preparations for Thursday's opponent before Saturday night's game. The Mater Dei coaching staff stays late Friday to start prep work for the upcoming Thursday game and continues on that game for a short time on Saturday morning, before turning their attention back to Saturday night's game. "If we can do preliminary work, such as loading the films for Thursday's game into the computer, we're going to get that stuff done to keep us on schedule," Rollinson says.
He does admit this is difficult, though. "I don't care who you are, it's hard for a coaching staff to work Saturday morning on the Thursday game when you have a game that night," Rollinson says. "You're just not as focused."
For Bragg, Sunday becomes an important day for the coaches. "On Sunday, we'd do a lot less written critique of the Saturday game than usual, and instead get right into preparing for the next game--so we have a game plan ready for the kids by Monday morning and can get right to work," he says. "We basically would cram two days of prep into one day of prep for the coaching staff."
It's also important to use the extra days following a Thursday night game to your best advantage. "Depending on how we're progressing, we may look at some game tape on Friday, then have a light practice Saturday," Rollinson says. "If we're scouting on Friday night, we may show the game tapes Saturday morning. If we feel everything is under control, we may even give the players two days off, because sometimes that's as good as anything else."
The Wisconsin playoff schedule presents some coaches with an even greater challenge--sometimes playing as many as three games in a week and a half. But Jorgensen insists the situation sounds more daunting than it actually is.
"Naturally your prep time is shorter, but it's also a time of the year where you're not doing as much physically in practice," Jorgensen says. "The focus is on going over a scouting report or making those subtle adjustments based on the system you're going to face. So it isn't really hard to put in a game plan. What is more difficult for the kids is the shorter recovery time."
School Considerations
Another challenge you must face when playing on a weeknight or a Sunday is making sure your student-athletes make it to school on time the next day. After their Sunday night road game in Syracuse, Whitcomb took the time to talk to his players about school attendance.
"I told them that they were students first and athletes second," he says, "and that they had to be in school for first period the next day. Every one of them was."
Jorgensen agrees. "We've emphasized to the kids that we're not going to accept them coming in late for school the next day and using the football game as an excuse," he says. "We tell them if they do that, they're really letting the team down, and that they will pay a penalty in playing time the next game. So we haven't had problems. But if you didn't address those issues, I think there would be problems."
For Bragg and his staff, Thursday night's duties extend into Friday morning. Bragg sends his coaches around the school to check on player attendance after a weeknight game. "We tell the kids we want to see all of them in on Friday morning," he says. "By the time a Thursday night game is over and the kids get out of here, it's 10:30. The kids have homework and have to eat, which makes for a late night for them. It's not an ideal situation by any stretch, but it's just something you have to deal with."
At Mater Dei, attendance expectations extend beyond the players. "We have a school rule that everyone who participates in a football game--not just the players, but the band and cheerleaders as well--has to attend school the next day," Rollinson says. "It's kind of a pride thing here now, to show up in full force the next day."
But being present and being prepared are two different things. So Jorgensen also stresses the importance of academics, and does what he can to make sure his players are staying on top of things.
"The main thing is making the kids well aware that studies come first," he says. "When there's a game during the week, they're not going to have adequate study time that night. So we put an emphasis on hitting the books early that week. And we also ask for help from their teachers to get that early start."
Rollinson also points out that students aren't the only ones who need to get the message. "A lot of parents would write a note for their kids saying they had a hard night or played a good game, and deserved to take the day off," he says. "We tell the parents not to do that--we have to be the leaders. Otherwise, why should the rest of the students have to come? And I also tell the parents that if we have attendance problems, the school will not let us play any more Thursday night games."
SIDEBAR
Scheduling Savvy
At many high schools, scheduling issues are out of the coach's hands. But in some school districts, the coach can play an active role in setting up his home games. In these cases, a coach must decide what schedule works best for his team.
"Our local stadium is shared among five high schools and a community college," says Bruce Rollinson, Head Coach at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, Calif., which has three Thursday night games this season. "We choose games on a draw basis, and we got the second pick this year. So we had to decide what game we most wanted played at our stadium. That was homecoming, so there went our first pick. Then you hope you get your pick for your second-most important game, and so on."
Part of Rollinson's challenge is resolving the desires of Mater Dei's fans with the conflicting needs of the football program. "We have as many as 7,000 people come to our games," he says, "and I'm sure most of them would rather we played on Saturday night when they don't have to rush here after work or deal with traffic. But that doesn't work for the football team."
So this season, Mater Dei had all Thursday and Friday night home games and no Saturday home games scheduled. "The last couple of years I've had some Saturday games," Rollinson says, "but this year I was bound and determined not to play on Saturday because it's too difficult for us to prepare as coaches. Because of the competitiveness of our schedule, I need to get kids in on Saturday, show them the game films from Friday or Thursday, and get working on the next opponent. When you're on that one-day turnaround from a Saturday game to preparing for the next week's game, you feel like you're playing catch-up all the time."