Fellowship

First, a quick men’s game update…..while I was in Dallas, my men’s team won 36-0. It helped to have 7 OL at practice that week, plus it helped to play a bit weaker team. But that’s what we needed to get the OL all on the same page. This week, we traveled up to LA to play the LA Inferno. On film, they looked a bit undisciplined, sort of a backyard style of play. That’s something I need to get used to, how to respond to that a bit better. In the women’s game, you’re seeing more and more good coaches and fundamentally sound teams. So no longer are we accustomed to reacting to the “backyard brawler” style of play. It’s sort of like a trained martial artist going up against just a wild swinger – if the trained fighter isn’t careful, he’ll make assumptions on how the brawler will act based on the trained fighter’s sense of what is “right”, and that may or may not be the case. I tend to think in the same terms sometimes, and assume that the defense will react in a fundamentally sound manner.

Anyway, the Inferno was more structured than they showed on film. Maybe it was a Week 1 thing for them last game, or maybe they thought we were going to do different stuff, who knows? We came out of it with a 16-14 win. In an unexpected development, our kicker didn’t make the trip (along with about 10 other guys), so we had to go for two each time. As I mentioned, we were missing about 10 guys, so it was sort of a scramble. Some guys I knew would be gone, others I had no idea until about an hour before kickoff. Welcome to the men’s game! 

We ended up driving up and down the field on them….our only three and out was the very first series. But each time we got down in the red zone, we’d do something to shoot ourselves in the foot. I can honestly say that there wasn’t a single play call that I’d take back, it was just another case of guys learning to work together. We’ll get better. We finished the game on their five, kneeling twice to run out the clock. I almost thought about running one last play down there, but all I could think about was, “OK, dummy, with your luck it’ll be ‘fumble and scoop ‘n score’, or even worse, they return it just far enough to be able to kick a field goal”. So we took the knee……

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Now the fellowship part. The day after the Dallas Elite beat us in the conference championship, their OL coach, Billy Hughes Jr., took me out to lunch. Coach and I have become friends since we first met in 2012. He’s a great guy, and a fine coach. We of course reviewed the game from the previous night and we asked each other what we were thinking at various times, and then got a bit deeper into certain techniques that we both used. To me, this is what the coaching fraternity is all about: helping each other and having fun while doing it! Amongst the mutual respect, there was plenty of laughter and genuine friendliness. I wish I had those types of relationships with more coaches.

With that, I wanted to talk more about our camp coming up in November. The whole reason for the camp is to bring some of the best coaches in the women’s game together to benefit each other. It’s not a Surge recruiting tool. I’m sad that people would think that, especially when we invite opposing coaches, even from our own division, to attend and be as involved as they want to be. We had a coach from another SD county team come out last year, who watched everything very closely – not from a “concerned” standpoint, but so he could quickly and quietly translate what we (Coach Hughes and I) were teaching into his terminology for his OL. I hope it benefitted his OL – I see that one of them made IWFL All American this year as a rookie!

I’ve always been guided by the great John Robinson on this. My second year as a coach I went up to USC, when Coach was in his second stint there. They had a coach’s clinic, and Coach gave the introductory talk, and he said, “If you want to get in the huddle, get in the huddle. If you want to be ‘right there’ for a drill, get as close as you want. Just don’t get run over.” That’s the level of access we want to offer here also.

Last year, besides the Surge players (who often provide a good measuring stick for other players), our largest contingent was from the Utah Falconz. Our next largest group (7 players) was from the Minnesota Machine! We didn’t get anyone from any of the LA teams (although a couple from Ventura) or Las Vegas, which I thought would be the largest groups given the proximity.

So coaches – let your players come on out. Let them mix in with other players from across the country. Mix in yourselves with the other coaches who are there. Sit down and have a meal with us, maybe an adult beverage or two. Fellowship is good.