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Coach Thurman's Corner (7/03 - 12/03) The EndZone |
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7/14/03- Welcome to my corner of the internet. My name is Kevin Thurman and I coach football. Youth and High School football specifically. I'm not a web designer by trade (which you've no doubt already determined for yourself) so bear with me as I learn the ropes of building web pages. If the formatting of these pages seems askew, try viewing it in MS Explorer v. 5.0 or higher. I've run into difficulty making different browsers display my pages the consistently, and Explorer seems to handle them the best. This site is here to offer an all around resource for youth football coaches everywhere, and especially those who choose to run the Double Wing. A significant amount DW resources have been gathered here and made easily accessible. Feel free to browse around and improve your knowledge of one of the most potent offensive attacks in use today. While you're studying the DW, make sure you take some time to check out the various drills, articles, links, and playbooks listed on this site. If you coach youth football, there's probably something here than can help you. -Coach Thurman
7/20/03- If I might be so bold as to flash back on you for a moment...... I attended my secondary school here in Portland, Oregon at Benson HS. I played football there (in your typical high school 'I' formation) and Madison HS was one of our chief rivals. Sometimes they beat us...sometimes we beat them. It was a competitive league and the games were always spirited. I remember how much we despised Madison and Grant High Schools. We loathed to loose to either of those teams and I'm sure they felt the same way about us. But back to today..... The Double Wing is alive and well in Oregon's largest class of High School football. Last year there were only two 4A schools of note in Oregon running the Double Wing. One of those was Hood River HS who once again proved the viability of the DW in major High School football by steam-rolling through the regular season and into the playoffs. Unfortunately, they lost in the State Semi-Finals to the eventual State Champs, Sheldon HS. Still, it was an impressive showing for the DW in a state that, while flush with DW teams in the 2A and 3A levels, has had very little DW representation in it's highest division. The other Oregon 4A school running the DW last year was Madison HS in Portland. They are coached by Tracy Jackson and are a member of one of the oldest leagues in the state (The Portland Interscholastic League). Madison didn't enjoy the same kind of success as Hood River, managing to secure just 1 win last year. But that came after 2 years with no wins at all. I spent much of last season working with coach Jason Travincek, the O.C. at Gaston HS (2A) in tiny Gaston, OR. We ran the DW and did ok with it. Coach Travnicek and coach Jackson are good friends. Good enough friends that Tracy eventually asked Jason to help him out at Madison, which eventually led to Jason asking me to come along with him to Madison. Of course, there's no way I'm going to pass up an opportunity to coach 4A football. Coach Jackson, coach Travincek, myself, and a whole list of other guys will be doing all in our power to muster up the first winning season this school has seen in a long while..... This will be the second straight season with the DW at Madison. We have an excellent DW knowledge base in our coaching staff. And above all, you can sense that the kids themselves want more this year. We have much to do and I'm looking forward to getting started soon.... Even if it does mean I'll eventually have to coach against my alma mater... -Coach Thurman Vacation at last... 7/24/03- I got a few days off...think I'll go fishing. If I don't respond to your emails it's not because I'm ignoring you...It's just that it's hard to log on to the net when you're standing knee deep in cold water with a fly rod in your hand:-) God's Country... 8/1/03- I love the summers here in the Pacific NW. I've always felt they are the best kept secret in the entire country. Perhaps my favorite spot of all in the summer is Central Oregon, the place I just got back from. Warm and sunny with vast stands of Incense Cedar and Ponderosa pine interrupted only by the occasional ice cold and crystal clear river or lake...This is the land in between Oregon's lush Willamette Valley and it's arid eastern high deserts...truely beautiful country. In fact I love the area so much that I plan on going back next year...even if I only caught 2 fish this time and endured 5 straight days of 100+ degree weather while camping. It was well worth the sunburn and snagged fishing lines. My apologies if I kept you waiting or didn't reply in a timely manner to your emails. I'm catching up now and appreciate your patience as I shift back into 'work mode'. -Coach Thurman Keeping the Power Play Tight... Many coaches (such as myself) prefer to kick out a 6 tech DE instead of doubling down on him and running the Power play one man wider. Speaking for myself, I just see it as a simpler answer to the problem. Always having the TE block Gap/Down, except in rare cases, just seems to lend itself to more types of defenses with fewer changes or adjustments. Taking this approach usually means that you'll be running the play very tightly. There is no accommodation in this kind of blocking for runners or pullers that have a 'sweep mentality'. In fact it's not unusual for me to want to run the Toss play even tighter in some situations so I really can't afford to have players that tend to want to take every play outside. The above leads me to spending a great deal of time emphasizing the need to run North instead of East/ West on the Toss play. I've done many different things to drive this idea home but none were ever as simple and elegant as the idea presented to me by Coach Jim Hooper of Denver, Colorado. Coach Hooper uses a plain old chain link fence (something that surrounds the vast majority of football fields in America anyway) , some blocking dummies, and a little imagination to teach his kids how keep the Toss play nice and tight. Surf over to the "DW Articles" page to check it out, you might find this to a be real time saver. -Coach Thurman
Madison HS just got a whole lot tougher... 8/8/03- As I mentioned before, I'm very excited to have the opportunity to coach with a group of guys who have the same love of Double Wing football as I do. This is for sure the most dedicated and experienced coaching staff I've ever worked with. Now I was pretty sure our staff was rock solid. After all, we know the DW and we are united in our desire to install the bad-assest, butt-kickenest, football offense in our league. Our defensive scheme is a good one that will play hell with the offenses we'll face in this league and our smash mouth mentality on offense is sure to spill over into our defense. So how could we possibly improve a Double Wing coaching staff like this? I mean, we're no group of Vince Lombardis here, but we do have quite a bit of collective DW experiance....At least I thought we did. Imagine my surprise to learn that Coach Jackson and Coach Travnicek had found a way to make our staff even better. They went out and found a guy who really knows his stuff. A guy who's been around the block a time or two. A guy who pretty much wrote the book on the DW as most of us know it. It's a privilege for me to say that Hugh Wyatt is now the OC at Madison HS in Portland, OR. Hugh is a great guy that in the past I've only had limited opportunities to sit down and speak with. You can bet that won't be the case this season. I imagine we'll be talking a lot of Double Wing for the next several months and I guaranty you I'll be soaking it up like a sponge. Terry Reece, a coaching friend of mine, said this when I told him... "Is that a golden horseshoe up your @$$? Man your lucky."...and I gotta' tell ya', at this point I can't argue with him. -Coach Thurman
A correction is in order... What the heck was I thinking? On 7/20 I said that there were only two 4A schools of note in Oregon running the Double Wing. Then I went on and said that Hood River HS made it to the semi finals...I was pretty much flat out wrong on both accounts. There were actually 3 note worthy DW teams at the 4A level. The third was Dallas HS of the state's Pac 9 league. They didn't make the playoffs last year but they have in the recent past, and have had a solid program ever since changing to the DW. Hood River lost in the second round of Oregon's playoffs last year to Canby HS (also a Pac 9 school) who eventually went on to loose in the semi finals. My apologies for the errors. Next time I promise to read from the correct playoff brackets when I'm quoting team statistics. :) -Coach Thurman
Soon... 8/12/03- Equipment issued today....Last preseason coaches meeting this weekend...Daily doubles start the 18th...First scrimmage on the 23rd. Can't wait to get past all this ramping-up and get out on the field.
Offensive Teaching Progression 8/19/03- You may know your playbook pretty well, and you may have a good idea of how you want to go about teaching it...but that by itself isn't enough to guaranty any kind of success come day 1 of practice. It's also important to now when and what you want to get done. The practices from day one through the first game of the year are perhaps the most important practices of the entire season. These usually set the tone for the work ethic and effort your team will display throughout the course of the year. They also will be the foundation on which your players will build their relationship with you....which is why you owe it to your kids to be as fully prepared and ready to teach as you can be. In the past I have found it helpful to sit down prior to the beginning of the season and write down the things I hope to accomplish...I've used the below list for the past three years when planning out my pre season practices and it has always helped me maintain my focus and more accurately plan out my practice schedules. It refers only to what I believe are the most basic requirements for fielding a competitive DW offense and of course can be changed to suit the needs of whatever team you coach. Time is such a short commodity in youth football that even though I swear I've tried every time management trick in the book, I still haven't found a way to teach everything I want to teach in a typical pre season time frame. Making a list similar to this one every season is the only way I can quantify what I need to get done, and then compare it to the actual amount of time I have and adjust accordingly. And any time I have left over is pure gravy and an opportunity to either polish what I already have, or teach something new that enhances what I already have. -DW Teaching Progression- By End of first Team Practice Day:
By End of first Team Practice Week: By First Game :
So Far So Good... 8/24/03- As I mentioned earlier our first scrimmage was yesterday. The kids looked great. Of course we have a lot to polish up but they really have learned a ton of stuff in this short week of daily double practices. The coaching staff has done a nice job of working the fundamentals and keeping the instruction pertinent to the lesson at hand. Both offense and defense look to be coming along nicely. The offense has learned a rather astonishing number of plays and variations and looks to be tough on the ground and through the air :-). The new defense is popular with the kids and is being learned quickly, and just as we had anticipated, is putting a lot of pressure on the various offensive schemes we have practiced against. But...we've lots left to do before we're ready for the first game and a good test awaits us at the upcoming 'jamboree' (couldn't they come up with a better name than that?)..... -Coach Thurman
A Unity of Purpose 9/3/03- Whew, the last few weeks have been a blur... But first, my apologies for the long delay between updates. With the season upon us time has become a precious commodity. I am a busy man now-a-days and the balance of family, work, and football have left me little time for sitting at my computer and taking care of business. I'll try to do better in the coming months but don't be surprised if my rants grow a little less frequent as the season progresses. ;) It's taken a while, but I think the kids are finally beginning to come together as a team. This has been a challenging pre season at times, and that sense of "unity of purpose" has been slow in coming. Don't confuse this as a lack of unity in terms of friendships because these kids are like any other in America. They live in the same neighborhoods, go to the same school, play on the same sports teams, and are friends in one fashion or another. The unity of purpose I refer to is that certain sense of 'team'. It's the collective feeling among team mates that what happens to the group as a whole is more important than what happens to each individual. It's more than 'friendship' in the classic sense. It's that thing inside of you that makes you willing to lay out your body and mind for the man who would fight beside you. Yep...it's been slow in coming. But...it's beginning to catch on. Schools that have been losing games for a long time have a ton of obstacles thrown up to prevent any unity of purpose from ever developing. The student body doesn't believe they can win, the community doesn't believe they can win, and worst of all...the kids don't believe they can win. And when you truly don't believe, there can be no unity.... and there can be no purpose. But that was all a different time. That shell of preconceived notions seems to be slowly eroding from the team's surface. Underneath appears to be the making of a good football team. A team with a unity of purpose. The kids are starting come together (albeit slowly) and their desire to win is beginning to show. At first it was just a few kids that whooped and hollered when a great play was made, now all of them do. It used to be just one or two kids that would step up and set the right example, now most of them do. We still have a ways to go, but the progress is beginning to accelerate. I think the staff at Madison this year has done a masterful job. Win, lose, or draw, no one can say this staff hasn't transformed football at Madison HS. Without Coach Jackson's steady hand and solid leadership, Coach Wyatt's stubborn insistence on effort and execution, and Coach Travnicek's tireless dedication, I'm not so sure this exact same set of kids would have made the kind of progress they have.... -Coach Thurman
Results... 9/3/03 I mentioned earlier that we had our jamboree last Friday night. A jamboree is basically a pre season game format that pits a few different teams against each other in a controlled setting for a set number of plays on each side of the ball. In our case we played 3 "games" that each lasted for 12 plays on each side of the ball. I'd like to say that we won them all but we didn't. We played against the likes of Pendelton (a state quarter finalist last year), Scappoose (the state 3A Champions for last three years running), and St Helens (a leader in it's league for the past several seasons). We gave up a total of 5 touchdowns in the three games. That's 5 out of 36 defensive snaps ending in a score for the opponent. >^( .Fortunately they were all blown assignments or missed tackles of one sort or another and those kinds of things can be fixed. The good news is that we did manage to make several tackles for loses and force two big turnovers... Offensively we only scored 1 touchdown but it came on a wedge play against Scappoose which has to be the BIGGEST High School football team I've ever seen. (huge kids...really unbelievable) As the games progressed, the kids got more and more confident and they're execution improved accordingly. All coaches want to do better but there was an encouraging facet to this game that only a coach would see. We stood toe-to toe with some of the best teams in the state and held our own. We didn't score much and we gave up too many...but we didn't quit either and the kids got a much needed taste of what's it's like to compete...I mean really compete. Not just go out with a bunch of pads on and look like a football player...but to actually challenge a worthy opponent and have a chance of beating them... A little more hard work from the staff and kids, and we'll win the next one of these match ups. :) -Coach Thurman
So where are we?... 9/16/03 So many things going on lately...We just started our third week of work following the jamboree I mentioned earlier. The list of things that needs fixing is starting to get shorter and the team has really come together over the past few weeks. A few kids have quit, a few new ones joined, and few others stepped up their games to become serious contributors. The entire coaching staff agrees that the kids are starting to buy heavily into the things we are trying to teach them. The defense has been a blast to coach. Coach Travnicek and I have so much to play with scheme wise. In fact, Jason frequently refers to us as a 'mad scientists'. I can't really argue with him. The best part of coaching this D has been how little we've had to teach the kids in terms of the overall scheme. Most of what we practice is techniques and situations...I like that kind of defensive practice. Offense is coming along nicely also. I love the Double Wing and there's little doubt that the rest of the staff does too. Hugh Wyatt has one of the most innovative and versatile Double Wings out there. He has melded the DW masterfully into our personnel and the kids are steadily becoming more and more dangerous on offense....The only problem is that it keeps getting harder and harder to "give him a look" when I run the Scout D. :) We're 1-1 record wise. 2 games into the season and we're .500...better than Madison has been in a long time. Next week is Benson and an opportunity to go to .670 Best of luck in your upcoming games and here's to a great week of practice and a win on Friday under the lights.
-Coach Thurman
Standing at the Base of the Mountain... 9/22/03 Nobody ever said coaching was easy. In fact, I can honestly say that I've yet to have a season that wasn't fraught with trials and tribulations of one sort or another. Some years are worse than others. The only sure thing is that somewhere along the line, you're going to have your mettle tested. If you're a head coach right now you know exactly what I mean. HC's are the ones who must lead their teams up the mountain that a football season is...But leading them up the hill means the coach must be the first to place himself at the base of that hill..... And since we all know that shit rolls down hill, it's not hard to figure out who's feet end up piled high in turd. :-) Kudos to those of you who've worn the HC hat. It's not an easy job.... -Coach Thurman
We still got work to do... 9/22/03 Hmmm....we are not a good football team yet. The coaches are working hard...very hard. This is easily proven by just asking our wives ;) ...but our efforts have yet to bear the fruit we are trying grow. The unity of purpose has been slow in it's development lately. At present we are still looking for ways to get ALL of our kids to feel the same sense of urgency that we coaches do with regard to the team. It's not that a unity of purpose doesn't exist within our team...it's more that it hasn't enveloped the team as whole yet. We are a relatively (ok...highly) inexperienced team having only 2 seniors on the squad with any prior football experience. But that by itself should not prevent the full fostering of team spirit. Make no mistake, there is a strong core of players that have seen the light and taken whole heartedly to the sense of "team" that must precede a true unity of purpose. But we still have those few players on the fringe that seem to have not bought completely in yet. For whatever reason they are distracted from the sense of "team".... Unable to see the up side of total team unity. These are good kids for the most part, all of them able to contribute to the team in his own way. But the plain truth of the matter is that with a scant 25 (give or take) varsity players, we can't afford to have one single kid fail to buy into our unity of purpose. So that is the continuing mission of this coaching staff....As a team we are 1-2 now, losing badly to Benson last Friday. (that hurts...I really didn't want to lose to my old High School) :-( My "coaching instinct" (such as it is) tells me that all else will fall into place when the entire team finally realizes that if they wish to win a battle, they all must fight together. -Coach Thurman Was it something we said? 10/1/03 So us coaches are sitting there after last Friday's game (a loss to undefeated league powerhouse Lincoln HS) enjoying some nachos and a nice um...frosty cold beverage. You'd think we would have been a pretty sorry looking bunch. After all, that was our third loss and we're now sitting at 1-3 :-| But that wasn't the case, we were actually feeling pretty good. Yeah, we lost another one...which always sucks. But there was something different in this loss. Something that had been lacking up until now had shown itself this night. The kids were different, they were hungry. They had fire...They wanted to fight! All of them. A unity of purpose had come upon this team. They wanted to battle Lincoln HS. (suuuuuwweeett!!!) :) The whole team, every last one of those 23 (yep, that's all that's left) young men played Lincoln as tough as they have been played yet this season. Lowly Madison had given Lincoln a game. No team had really made them work that hard up to that point. Truth be told, if we hadn't given them the short field so much the result of this game could very easily have been different. I believe eight Lincoln drives started inside our own 35 yard line. >^( Yep, there's still much work to be done.... We need improvement on both sides of the ball.... We need to foster this new found sense of pride and team.... And we need to keep building. The foundation has been slow in coming, but coming it is... -Coach Thurman
Getting closer... 10/14/03 My apologies for the long pause between updates. As usual, football season has me hopping. I hate to sound like a broken record but time is in short supply for me this time of the year. In fact...getting a little sleep one of these nights would be nice. I can honestly say that I've never had a more challenging season of coaching. The fact that we're 1-5 right now really isn't the reason why. Yep, we lost two more since I last posted. But I never got too disappointed.. the team has played it's best football of the season over these last couple of weeks. We even managed to play the #10 team in the state straight up (for awhile anyway;) In fact we held the lead 14-0 at the end of the first quarter, then went into halftime ahead 20-14. Our team played them tough for 3 full quarters until our lack of numbers caught up with us and we wore down in the fourth. At that point they hung three quick touchdowns on us to win it... :( I do believe that had we been able to match the 40+ players they had (or just come close)... the outcome might have been different that night. (would've been a great night for an upset...it was cold and misty and the field lights made it almost surreal) So the silver lining is that the kids gained a tremendous amount of self confidence. They know they can play football now. Not surprisingly, we have seen great strides in our progress as a team. Of course there is always work to be done and things to get better at. So we can't call ourselves a good football team yet. We have another hurdle to cross, and we can take that first step this Friday against Roosevelt. -Coach Thurman
True Warriors 11/12/03 Hmmm.....Things are strangely quiet these days. I suppose our season coming to an end has much to do with that. It's funny, every year it takes me a couple of weeks to shift out of 'season mode' and let my feet touch the ground again. That doesn't seem to have changed for me this year. It feels a little weird to come straight home after work now...like I should be somewhere else or something. At least with the season over, I can reflect back on the things I'll take from the experience... This was a challenging season indeed. Perhaps the most challenging I've experienced yet. But people don't improve without being challenged, and everything that's worth anything in life takes hard work to get... so I'll value this season's lessons until I coach my last game ever. Where to begin? We finished our last 3 games of the season by going 1-2. After a big win against Roosevelt, we dropped our last two games against Franklin and Marshall. In both cases the teams were bigger, faster, and deeper than we were. In fact, that was the case most of the year, we matched up well against a few opponents but usually not. Even though we lost those last two, the kids played some good football over the last 3 games of the season. In fact the game against Marshall was a classic ending with us down 26-24 and driving. Bummer...we ran out of time inside their 35 yard line. We played toe to toe with Franklin also, it was just too bad that a great second half of football in that game could not overcome the poor first half. As a staff, we coaches were all pleased at the consistent progress we witnessed in the waning weeks of the season. The team finally, completely, and unconditionally gelled into a unit. It was a very late time to do so, but better late than never. I do believe we did everything we possibly could to help these young men get there faster, but in the end these things must take their own pace. I have to admit that early in the season there were times that I wasn't so sure I would be able help them over the hump. We'd lost kids to drugs, grade ineligibility, gang fighting...you name it. There were some very tough times during the course of this season. We finished the year with just 18 kids on our varsity roster. That's not many for a 4A school. But those kids were our true warriors. Tough, snarly kids who just wouldn't quit. They were 18 kids that I wouldn't have parted with if you paid me to. I'll miss each of them. I'll talk one more time with the seniors when I see them in a few days at the awards ceremony. Perhaps I can get them to sign a football for my office desk.... -Coach Thurman
Merry Christmas! 12/26/03 And so came and went another Christmas... I hope you had an opportunity to see family and friends and celebrate in a manner fitting for such a time... This will be one to remember for me. Of course, I have a shiny new guitar and amplifier with "Marshall" written on front to make sure I do :) I raise my glass to you coaches who are already thinking about what you'll do when next season starts. I can totally relate. I'm starting to concoct plans for a group of 9 and 10 year old kids as I write this :) C'mon July...get here!! May you have nothing but good fortune in the new year... and my best wishes for your upcoming seasons. Merry Christmas! -Coach Thurman
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