[Orange Blaze]

I am in a coaching mentorship program and I wrote this piece and what it takes to succeed in our group discussion.

“This past weekend the American high school football team at the school I coach track at made it to its second state finals appearance in school history. We are 13-1 and a win would be our first football state championship in school history. While it was a proud moment for our program I am not here to talk about us but the team we play against.

We play in the smallest school division in Kentucky. The school I coach at is Raceland and our opponent is Pikeville. Pikeville has become a perennial powerhouse in our division and has won 3 state championships since 2015 and they are the defending champions from last year. We met them last season and they beat us 36-7 in the state semifinals have beaten us in 5 consecutive games since 2018. They also beat us soundly in our regional track meet last spring. We are about a 2 touchdown underdog against them next week.

They have become a model of success to be followed for numerous reasons. They typically always have the strongest line in our division every season and their athletes are relatively bulletproof and don’t have many injuries. Their team speed is usually really good too and last season they finished 4th place in our state track meet.

What stands out to me about their program is their head coach. He had been coaching for over 15 years before winning his first state title and had a few really bad teams early in his career. He had kept plugging along over his career and figured out the recipe for success and now he has a dominant program across the state and they would likely be a top 5 team in the next 3 highest divisions in our state as well. I share this because I was reflecting on what it took for both of our programs to get to this point. I will tell the story of Raceland’s journey in a later post.

My main take away for both teams was that patience will be rewarded as long as you continue growing and develop a system along with a strong support team of coaches, athletes, parents, and the community at large that buy into your philosophy and try to execute it to perfection. Hopefully this is year is when our team figures out how to win the big one. I’ll keep everyone posted and tell you how it goes next week!”