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

                                       
                     

The Importance of Mental Toughness

by Brian Wical
Cardinal Stritch High School Head Football Coach
Follow @CoachWical

In my opinion, mental toughness is the greatest thing that you can potentially gain from the weight room and off-season program. Notice I said “potentially gain”. There is no guarantee that you will actually gain mental toughness just by your kids showing up. You must “teach” it to them. There are various ways of doing this, none greater than endurance challenges.

As the coach, you can control the difficulty of the drills and exercises being performed on a daily basis. Since that is the case, at Cardinal Stritch we work to make the workouts tough enough that our kids will not be able to complete the entire workout or set without taking a small break. 

An example of this is Coach Baden (Strength & Conditioning) will tell our guys to do a set of Mountain Climbers. We may not give them a set number, but rather, we time them and don’t let them know how long we will be timing them for. We know it is tough even for the most in-shape athletes to complete this task without take a few seconds to pause when it is combined with all of the other exercises in the workout. The thought behind this is: lets say you wish for your players to be able to do 45 seconds of Mountain Climbers. If we time them for a minute and they take 2 or 3, 3-second breaks throughout, they are actually doing 51-54 seconds worth of them, which is more than what we had planned. Also, by demanding more than what they can do, you are forcing them to fight through the exercise whenever they are thinking of quitting. 

By using this philosophy, it has improved our teams overall mental toughness exponentially thus far. Between raising our expectations of competition and trying to “teach” mental toughness as best as we can, we have actually improved at a rate (in those two categories) much faster than what I had originally planned for this football team. That means we will need to spend a lot less time on these things once our summer camp days begin and can focus on football more. 

Some may think that getting bigger, faster, and stronger is the most important thing that can be gained from the weight room. Although I feel this is very important to our overall success, I feel like it is naturally going to happen. What I mean is, I have hired a first-class strength coach to take care of the physical aspects of the summer plan. If our kids show up, I am more than confident they will get stronger. That is a byproduct of showing up. 

When you think about it, the alternative would be laying in bed at home. When you compare the two, showing up to the weight room for a workout is obviously going to get you stronger, bigger, and faster than being at home. Therefore, I focus on the mental aspect the entire time, personally. I try to drive and motivate our kids to push through it and to begin to tap into their full potential. Are we completely there yet? No. But the good news is that we are making decent strides every single day towards our ultimate goal: become a championship winning football program.

The Importance of Communication

by Brian Wical
Cardinal Stritch High School Head Football Coach
Follow @CoachWical

I always knew that communication was an important aspect to being a Head Football Coach. In fact, one of the main answers I gave in each of my coaching interviews on an important trait for a Head Coach was always communication. However, I am not sure I truly understood the importance of it until I actually became one. 

One of the first things that I picked up on after being hired as the Head Coach was that there seemed to be little to no communication in the past at Cardinal Stritch when it came to the football program. This was evident on all levels, but none more than with the parents. It was also true with the football players as well, which is a huge issue, at least in my opinion. 

First of all, the parents are probably the most important people that you can communicate with. Let’s face it, many times our kids wouldn’t be at a summer workout or even football practice in the fall if it wasn’t for the parents. They need to be the first group that is in the know because they are the lifelines to your entire football program.

 

At the first meeting I had with our football players after accepting the job, I had each fill out a player profile page. I wanted this for a multitude of reasons. Which included: their address so I knew what part of Toledo they were coming from, what position they had played in the past, their grade level - just to name a few. The most important line on there though was the line that requested the parents email address. I immediately gathered all of the email addressed provided for me and made a group in my school email account titled: “Football Parents”.

 

After establishing this group I sent an email out, just introducing myself to all the parents. I wanted them to know whom I was, where I came from, and assure them that I was going to lead their sons to new heights, both as football players and as young men in our community. This was originally done as a one-time thing. Shortly after sending it, however, I got to thinking that the parents would probably appreciate a monthly newsletter informing them of the happenings within the program.

 

I got a lot of positive feedback from our parents that they really did appreciate the communication, because before I got the Cardinal Stritch job, they felt “out of the loop”. Outside of the monthly newsletters, creating the bulk email group has allowed me to communicate changes with them as well. I distributed a summer calendar to all the families in April. Because of this, a few dates and scheduled events have changed a little since then. Instead of setting up a meeting or relaying a message through our athletes (that may or may not make it home), it was simple to type a quick message and alert everyone to what is going on.

 

The other great advantage of this is that it makes the families feel like they are actually a part of your program, which I want. It isn’t fair for me to preach that our team is like a family and that we should all care for each other, if that caring stops at the players. We are all a football family and that is something I am truly working to try and facilitate within our football community.

 

Because of that goal, we have started a football parents club. One thing that shocked me was that there was no organized club to help support our kids during the season. Things like team meals, fruit during two-a-days, etc. were all things that I have seen football parent groups do in the past. Yet, the issue was, we didn’t have one at all. That isn’t to say there weren’t parents doing a tremendous job in supporting the players in the past with these types of things, because there were. 

However, they were more isolated events by single families, than they were an actual group. I believe the group concept is one more way to help our parents truly feel like they are a part of our football family. I am proud to announce we have started that club, and just finished with the second monthly meeting Monday night. Traditionally, this will be something that is completely and solely run by our parents, and I will have little to do with it, other than coordinating certain plans and events together. However, since the group is still in its infancy I went to the meeting Monday night to make sure my visions, the school’s visions, and the parents’ visions were all aligned so we don’t get in trouble or offend any other groups. 

The next place where communication becomes key is with your players. You absolutely must communicate everything to them. This includes: team rules, expectations, times, events, what to wear to practice, etc. If you don’t, I promise the first thing you will deal with is the kid saying “well, coach, you never told us that”. Most of the time, they will be right and you have no legs to stand on. To help prevent that situation, communicate EVERYTHING to them. Each week in our scouting report, the last page is a schedule of the weekly events. I even communicate what color jersey they are to wear to practice, what the practice attire is, when there is a meeting, special event, you name it. I do this because that way every kid loses the excuse of “coach didn’t tell me”. 

The third most important aspect of communication within a football program is with your assistant coaches. My coaches probably think I am crazy already, and we haven’t even coached a game yet. I try to be the most organized and prepared that I can be, for everything. I have monthly meetings with our staff, and each meeting is to discuss some different kind of topic. For example, in February the meeting agenda was just an introductory meeting to my program. I then went through in March and taught the entire offensive playbook to my staff, as if they were the players. In April, our Defensive Coordinator did the same thing. I run the Special Teams as well, so I went through and taught each of them the playbook. You can see that each meeting had a set agenda, and was put in place to keep us all together in the off season still, meanwhile working towards being ready for late-July when we use our coaching days and actually get to have football practices. 

The bottom line here is that in every facet of your football program, communication is essential. With parents, coaches, players, and even school administration. Every decision you make needs to be communicated to at least one of those four groups. We owe the success of our football program, often times, to how well we can communicate what is happening in our head to others around us. Make sure you are doing all that you can to help your program by taking advantage of something so easy.

All-Star Week Update: Northwest Ohio All-Stars

 

Crestview HS (Convoy, OH) WR Venice Roberts takes the jet sweep hand-off around right end as head coach Jerry Cooper looks on

 

by Brian Wical
Cardinal Stritch Catholic High School Head Coach
Follow @CoachWical

This week has been flying by! In this past, this was always the official, unofficial, start to football mentally for me. Having never coached in this game previously, I always attended and watched our players at Lima Central Catholic take part in the game. In my mind, this always got my brain in full-blown football mode and in the mood for the season. I was already there this year, being a first year head coach in a new place, however, the practices have gotten me even more excited for football season to begin. 

On Day 2 of practices, we worked a lot more on the defense than on Day 1. The issue with the defense and this game is that there isn’t a lot that can be done from a schematic standpoint. You are required to either play Cover 1 (man-free defense) or Cover 0 (straight man-to-man) in the secondary, and you can only blitz your middle linebacker to either A-gap. The linemen cannot stunt and must be lined up over an offensive lineman (they can shade, but not align in the gap). Finally, you must do all of this out of a 4-3. Obviously, these rules kind of put a defensive coach in a bind and don’t leave a lot to work on. All-star caliber football players should be able to play these two defenses in their sleep. Needless to say, not much defensive work has been done in practice this week, however, much more was done on Tuesday. We also installed all of our counter run plays and inside run plays, offensively, as well as continued to rep our pass plays. The timing was much better and began coming together too. 

Day 3 was the best day of practice yet. We spent a lot of time perfecting our rocket and jet sweeps. The timing of these two plays essentially dictates the success of the entire offense and was critical we got it down. We also did a little more work with our special teams, although we struggled with our kicker getting the ball off the ground in kickoff, which was a little unsettling. Especially considering he was bombing kicks 70 yards on Tuesday. I am confident once the lights turn on though, all will be good in that area as well. 

Overall, I am really enjoying my time with all of the players. We coached against every player on the roster last season, and it is neat to see their talents up close. The one thing that is also neat is seeing the football IQ of some of the players that come from the better teams. Its not surprise that the kids who come from the more successful schools have some of the highest football knowledge and IQ, as well. 

Last night, both teams (WBL All-Stars and NOW All-Stars) came together in Van Wert for the first time. The teams have been practicing at separate facilities up to this point. We are given one hour of practice time on Thursday for a walkthrough-type of practice and then the people who host the game did  a cookout for all of the players and coaches. Naturally, I cant wait until 7:30pm tonight when we can play some real football, though!

Ohio Wins Fourth Straight in Big 33 Football Classic

by Jeff Fisher

High School Football America

The Pennsylvania stars blew a 14-point fourth quarter lead Saturday night and then lost 24-21 to Ohio in overtime in the annual Big 33 Football Classic in Hershey.

Ohio pushed its win streak to four straight over the Keystone Staters with four interceptions in the fourth quarter and overtime.

The Buckeye State claimed the victory when Nana Kyeremeth (Thomas Worthington HS) intercepted a Skyler Mornhiweg (St. Joseph's Prep) pass in the first overtime.

Click here to read a game story from the Centre Daily Times.