Service Day 2013

Brian Wical is in his first year as the head football coach at Cardinal Stritch High School outside of Toledo, Ohio in the town of Oregon. At 25-years old, Coach Wical is one of the youngest head football coaches in America.  Throughout the 2013 season, Coach Wical will give readers an inside perspective of what it's like to build a tradition at a school that has had only ten victories since 2007.

Little Sisters of the Poor group led by Coach Wical and Coach Jason Waters

by Brian Wical
Cardainl Stritch High School Head Football Coach
Follow @Coach Wical

One thing that I am always preaching about in our program is creating a 1^st class culture. I know it sounds cliché, but we want to help provide a program that develops young men that behave in a 1^st class manner. We want them to behave that way on the football field, in the classroom, and in our community. 

One thing a lot of kids don’t realize is their actions outside of the school building reflect not only on themselves, but on the football program and the high school. Therefore, if a kid is out in our community and causes trouble and has a run-in with law enforcement, not only will that look bad on the player himself, but also it will make people think that we don’t hold our kids accountable in our program. 

A fine example of this right now on a much larger scale is the whole Aaron Hernandez fiasco. Many people are questioning the New England Patriots, Florida Gators, and Urban Meyer’s handling of Hernandez while under their watch. This is exactly what I mean. It is automatically assumed that if you do bad, someone isn’t keeping a close enough eye on you. As a result, I try to teach our young men that it is imperative that they behave in a civil manner that displays class and character everywhere that they go. 

One thing that I think is essential in helping to provide our kids with an opportunity to show what great young men they are is scheduling a team service project. We can put action to our words, and it also shows our players that we as coaches don’t just give them lip service about these things, because we actually get out and participate with them. 

We had two different projects set up for our team this year, so we divided in half. One of the projects was landscaping work at the Little Sisters of the Poor home. This facility services the elderly who also are poverty stricken. Through conversation, I learned that there are actually nine nuns who live in the facility and help run and manage it, as well as two Catholic priests. Our kids did seven hours worth of odd jobs on their HUGE property, which included rearranging their maintenance garage, spreading mulch, assisting in cutting down seven trees, and edging their flower beds. 

The second group assisted a local parish, St. Jerome, in setting up their annual festival. They were a huge help to those responsible for managing the festival and assured everything would be set up. 

Both parties were extremely thankful for our help. There is nothing greater than seeing the bond that teammates make while doing these types of projects coupled with the pure excitement of the people we helped when they see all that we were able to accomplish for them in such a short amount of time. This was definitely a well spent seven hours and we will continue to do in future years as we build the football program at Cardinal Stritch High School. 

St. Jerome Festival set-up crew led by Coaches Allen & Nick Fuller