| Organization in the Year Round Program
Originally Published - Nike 2013 Coach of the Year Clinics Notes - by Earl Browning
Thank you very much for that nice introduction. I want to start by telling you something about our school. Syracuse has an enrollment of 2000 students. We play in a league where the schools are in the 2000-2400 student population size. The powerhouse in our league is Bingham High School. Their enrollment is around 2350 students. We beat them on the way to the state championship game this year. We played Jordan High School in the finals and lost. The players in our program are not big players. We have one or two players that are good size but for the most part our offensive linemen are in the 180-190 pound category. Our players feed off each other and play extremely hard. We try to develop those kinds of players at our school. We opened as a school in 2007. In our first season we went 0-10. We played with only juniors and sophomores. We were small but we had many players in our program. Since the first season, we are 44-15. We have been to the state playoffs five times out of six years, the state semi-finals three times, and this year we made it to the championship game. Syracuse has an enrollment of 2000 students. We are proud of our players and the community. Syracuse is a football school. I have been at other school and they were not known for their football. At Syracuse, we are known as a football school. We tried to make this into a football school but our players play other spots. We want our players to lift constantly. Our players lift in the morning and practice in the afternoon. That is what we base the philosophy on in our programs. It is one way we try to get our players to buy into the system. We start in January and develop a calendar. We give each one of our players a packet and they take it to their parents. The program starts in January and goes all the way through December. We finished in November and we do not have much of an off-season. I am going to cover what is in the packet and how we get the parents to buy into our system. If we organize, know what is going on, and not try to work around the parents, the parents will get on our side. They will help us to get their sons involved in the sport. The first page of the packet gives a schedule of events we will participate in and the cost of each event. It also tells whether these events are mandatory or option for participation. Utah is a big 7-on-7 tournament state. The only tournament we participate in is the Weber State tournament held in June. It is a big tournament for our players. The cost is $15, which all goes to Weber State. We may participate in one other tournament against a high school in our area. We have a summer camp at our school. The charge is $160 and it is a great fee. If you go to Utah State or another college in our area the cost is $300. After the camp, we start summer conditioning. There is a $50 fee for this program. We make sure we list each charge in the packet so the parents know exactly how much expense is involved. We also have general descriptions of what the fees are and how to pay them. The second sheet of the packet is a copy of our 2013 schedule. It tells the parents when the athlete must report and a schedule of practice times. I also throw in a football schedule. It has our varsity, JV, and sophomore schedule. It also includes the dates for all the playoff games. That is basic information and time commitment for the players. The third page is important to me and for our program. It is our "mission statement." We want the parents to buy into our program as the players do. Mission Statement: Welcome to the 2013 edition of Syracuse Football, home of the Syracuse Titans. The entire coaching staff is filled with excitement and enthusiasm heading into our 7th season. We cannot wait to work with the great young men of this community. in order for us to be successful our team must work extra hard in the weight room during the off-season and summer months. Additionally in August, we must have high intensity workouts during our twoa-day practices to kick off the 2013 season. To reach our full potential we need to have total dedication and commitment to our football program. We must realize this can only be accomplished through extraordinary commitment, positive attitude, and hard work and by taking one-step at a time. We are trying to tell the parents they need to plan their vacations around some of the things we are doing. In the mission statement we have an academic award given to players that achieve high academic standards. This award signifies we are students first and athletes second. We felt if we put this into our mission statement that it would get the school administration behind us. It also got some of the academic players in the school on board with our program. These are the four criteria the players must meet.
I began to question what I was doing. The first year we played with every team and battled to the end. There were no blowout games. One of the teams we lead at halftime played for the state championship. We knew we had some good things coming back for the next year. People in your program have to be good kids and role models in our community. That is easy to say and hard to do. That summer we lost four players that got involved in some criminal activities. Those players left the program and the other players in our program stepped up. Our coaching staff went to a clinic two years ago and listened to a college coach talk about discipline. He said he had to eliminate 20 scholarship players out of his program because they were bad actors. He cut his losses and went on with his younger players. In high school you want to help the kids and give them the benefit of doubt but there comes a time you must cut your losses and go on with what you know is right. I honestly believe that is how we got players to buy into our system and play together. It gives the players dedicated to the program the opportunity to step up and do the right thing. We had one player in six years that signed a Division-I scholarship. Nevertheless, our players play as a team, as a unit and they play tough together. We played teams in the playoffs this year that had five and six players going to Division-I programs. They were going to Utah State Utah, Auburn, and Alabama. We had two players sign with Dixie State College and one to Southern Utah. Those are small college programs. They fight tough together and we develop that in the off-season. I believe that comes from our mission statement and our commitment to it. We have it posted on the bulletin board and they see it every day. In our summer camp, we have other schools from our community that participate in it. In Utah, we have five days that we can practice. We have a three-hour session from 8:30 to 11:30. We start with defense and much of the session is chalk talk. In the afternoon, we go to offense. We work 1:30 to 4:30. After we have dinner that evening, we give them the rest of the evening off. On Tuesday, we reverse the sessions. We go offense in the morning and defense in the afternoon. On Wednesday, we put the offense and defense together in the morning session. That afternoon we bring in four schools from the area and have what we call a "shoot out." About eight schools in the area have their camps at the same time. On this particular form I listed Layton, and Box Elder. We will have another school named Woodcroft join us. The way the shoot out works is Syracuse plays defense first. We align at the 40 yard line. The first school runs a play, Layton runs a play, and Box Elder runs a play. We rotate through the three offensive teams against Syracuse's defense. We work three cycles and rotate the next defense on the field. Each defense plays nine plays in a series. We rotate the three offensive teams and the defense stays the same for nine plays. This camp is something we do right at our school and the cost is cheap. We do not hire officials as we do it ourselves. On Thursday, we go defense in the morning and offense in the afternoon. That evening we take them to the Layton Surf and Swim Club. We have some fun with the players. We have a big Barbecue, they get to swim, and hang out together. All the coaches are there and we kind of come down to their level. The coaches bring their families and we all have a good time. It is a big get-together for our football program. The next day is our scrimmage day. We all meet at Roy High School, which is very close to Syracuse. We do another tournament, which involves your varsity and JV programs. We have the varsity going on one field and the JV program on another. We also bring our sophomore team and they go later after the varsity and JV teams. This has been very beneficial for our program. Every since I became the head coach we have participated in these scrimmage type arrangements. The coaches like it because it is at our school. They are not out of town. They get to sleep in their own beds and their routines remain the same. This is good for us. We have our five-day camp at our own school. It is probably similar to two-a-day practices but it becomes a fundraiser for us. We make close to 10 thousand dollars off the camp. We charge 160 dollars a player. If you have 100 players coming, that is 16 thousand dollars. The coaches make a little money and we have a good time doing it. FOOTBALL PLAYER
Missing practice without a valid reason
On this sheet, we also have our requirements for getting a letter. They must attend all practices on time, maintain a 2.0 GPA, and play in 10 quarters. (Four plays in one quarter is a quarter) We put all these things on our web site. We start our off-season program on January 2. The calendar is in their packet. We start with the varsity and map out what they will do for eight weeks. We have an eight-week cycle and in the ninth week, we go into a testing period. (Titan Challenge) After we come back to school from the holiday break, we have sophomore orientation. Our high school make up is grades 10, 11, and 12'h graders. Our sophomore coaches go to the junior highs with fliers from our school. They want to enlist freshmen players to participate in our weight program. We have a big orientation meeting for the sophomores on January 16'h. We had 100 freshmen in that meeting this year. I spoke and the sophomore coaches speak. We show them a highlight film to get them excited about coming into the program. We give them their packet, which tells them everything they will do. In the freshmen program, we lift on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. We lift from 3:30 to 4:30. We always give them Friday off because there are many holidays during that time. We go for eight weeks and have the "Titan Challenge." That takes us through the month of February.
The first week of March, we start the eight-week cycle over. Our freshmen are still lifting Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday but they now lift at 6-7 am in the mornings. The reason we do that is the attendance factor. We did not have freshmen missing morning workouts. That allowed them to participate in other sports if they chose. We work two groups in the workouts. One group lifts and the other group goes through abilities in the gym. After 30 minutes, they switch.
At the middle of the month we start team competition. With our varsity players we have a school curriculum that allows them to take a football class and other physical education classes, which deal with body training. We are lucky at our school because we get our players in a football class every other day. If their schedule works out, we could get them every day. The team competitions start in March and include cone drills, pro agility, bag drills, and sumo wrestling. That fits in after we finish in the weight room. We take the top eight players in our program and they become the team captains. After we split up the top eight we try to equally divide the rest of the teams among players of like athletic ability. We want them to compete in everything they do. We keep track of the team competitions and have the finals at the end of the school year. Our in-school football classes are part of our program. We get them early in the morning from 7:30-9:00 am. We divide the groups into lifting and agilities groups and alternate them. We are fortunate to have those types of programs at our school. I think if you are going to be in this sport for the long run, you have to sell your program to the administration so you can get these types of programs. Our players work twice as hard as any other students do in those classes. We expect them to do it. We expect them to win and we expect them to work hard in those classes. We are going to be serious with them but we want to have the attitudes and environment very friendly. We give them boundaries that we want and they follow them. When we get into April, we continue with our varsity players in the program. In April, we start the linemen and skilled-players lunches. We have the linemen one week and the skilled-players the next week. The coaches give up their lunchtime every Wednesday and meet with those groups in a classroom. The players get their lunch and go to the classroom. In that lunch period, we have an "Introduction" session with them. We do not know the players very well at this point in the program. We want them to stand up one at a time and tell us about their family and where they live. Each player gets up and talks for a couple of minutes about his life away from school. You find out different things about your players during these talks. We do that with the linemen one week and the skilled-players the next week. The next time we meet, we talk about goals. During the month, the workouts with the freshmen JV, and varsity continue as they did the month before. The second eight-week cycle comes up in May. That is our test week, which we call the "Titan Challenge." With our lunch program, the topic is still goals but as we approach May, the topic begins to focus on leadership. We want to know what they think makes a good leader. We want them to start thinking about the qualities of leaders and who they would like leading their team. When we do our planning, we want to consider other sports that have events during this time of year. We do not want to conflict with the state tournaments in baseball, track, or any other sport. We do not do any team 7-on-7 work until after the other sports have had their finals. We work the 7-on-7 workouts until the end of school, which is June 7th this year. On June 6th we are almost out of school. Our players come in and have our last 7-on-7 practice. We go from 10-12 in the morning. We do the final team competition from 12-1 and follow that with a big barbecue. We celebrate at the closing of those events. When we have the team competition, the winners at the finals get tee shirts. The bottom line to me is this. The off-season has to be about competing and not just lifting. When we workout we spend 40 minutes in the weight room. They spend that time working and not hanging out and gabbing. They know the reps and percentage of weight with which they are maxing. After 40 minutes in the weight room, we put them through a tough ABS program, where they work on their ABS and oblique muscles. After that, they go to 30 minutes of running and agilities. One day may be form running and the next may be explosion and footwork. During the third week of June, we run the football camp. After the camp, we give our players a bracelet. It says Titan Football and we put a theme word on it. This year we put "finish" on it. The year before that was "make no excuses." I want them to wear the bracelet after the final game on Saturday for the rest of the summer. After the camp, we give them a break until practice starts on July 15th. We bring them back and start lifting in July. When we start back with the lifting program, we start our summer conditioning. During these sessions, we do not go long. We also mix in some chalk talks. Even though we do not go long, the players work extremely hard. We have the two-week acclimation period. The first week is weight training, conditioning, and chalk talks. The second week we are in helmets only. In August, we continue with the weight training and conditioning. However, in the first part of the month we run a youth camp. Our players run the camp. It is mandatory that our seniors be there. It is good for senior leadership and it is good that the little kids in the camp know who they are. After the youth camp, we take our seniors on a senior retreat. We pack them up and take an overnight trip. All these activities are in the packet we give the players on the first day. The parents see the packet and they know when the players are going to be involved with something in the program and can plan around what we do. This helps the parents to buy into what we have going on. We have coaches meetings on Sunday. The offensive staff meets at my house and the defensive staff meets at Coach Faerber's (defensive coordinator) house. When we come to work, on Monday morning, there is a plan for everything and everyone knows what is going on with his group. August 11th, is our first day of two-a-day practices. On Monday morning we practice from 8:00 - 10:30 a.m. Our afternoon session is from 6:00 - 8:30 p.m. We follow this program until Friday. On Friday we have our Blue/White game at 9:30 a.m. In the evening practice we have the sophomores come in a 5 p.m., the Varsity comes in at 6 p.m. On Friday, we shorten the morning practice and have our inter-squad scrimmage. That afternoon when we come back for the evening practice it is a shorten practice because of the morning activities. During the season, we bring our team in on Saturday after the game and do some lifting. We also watch the game film from the night before. With the advancement in technology, the players can see the game that night. We are a Hudl school and have the opportunity to see the film the same night. We download it on Friday night and the players can watch it. When they come in on Saturday morning, they know what we are going to point out. We point out what they are doing right and wrong. Once schools starts we go with our Varsity and sophomores practice at 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. That is our routine until the next game on Friday night. We come in on Saturday morning and watch film and lift weights. Everything I have talked about is in the packet and in detail. The calendar is complete and every event and date is on the calendar. If you have, everything written down the parents will jump on-board. Our first game is August 22nd and the last game of the season is October 25th. The next month is playoff month. If you get to the final game, the season will end November 25. The following Monday and Tuesday is equipment collection day. The players should turn everything in washed and clean. That gives us two weeks to prepare for the sophomore and varsity banquets. We make a big deal out of this. It is a fitting way to close your football season. We have our banquets in December. We have the sophomore banquet one week before the varsity banquet. They have the season off from the equipment turn in day until January 2nd On January 2nd we start over again in preparation for the next season. When we start our weight training program we have an A-Day and a B-Day. We run the program on an eight-week cycle. We go eight weeks before we test the players. We do circuit training and the first week the players get so sore they cannot stand it. It is all repetition work. We give them a percentage weight and they go for 45 seconds non-stop at each station. The exercises we do on Monday and Tuesday are power cleans, military press, incline/bar, alternating straight leg dead lift/dumb-bells, box squats, step-ups and pull ups. The first week is a circuit and the second, third, and fourth weeks the weight goes up and the reps come down. The fifth week, the reps go up and the weight comes down. The next two week we increase the weight and decrease the reps. The final week we increase reps and reduce weight, and then test. This is what works best for us. We do the same things with the other exercises in our workout. The Wednesday and Thursday exercises are clean and press, straight leg dead lift/dumb-bells, bench press, shoulder circuit, back squats, bent over rows/dumb-bells, and dumb-bell explosion. We change the exercises so they do not get bored with lifting. Our Friday lifts are speed box squats, dumb-bell upright rows, dumb-ball bench and punches, box lunges/bar, alternate straight leg, chin-ups, and military press. In the weight program, we have two testing periods. We test in March and May. In the testing period, we test 40-yard dash, pro agility, bench, squat, and clean. We time the 40-yard dash electronically. We time the pro-agility with a stopwatch. When they do their weight testing, we are in direct supervision to make sure they do the lift correctly. We chart everything and put it on a sheet so they can see it. Being a new school, we created all the boards that are on the walls. We have a record board in our weight room for lifting. It lists the testing criteria across the top of the board and the weight classifications of the players. We break our players down by weight. We have eight weight divisions. We start at 90-120, 121-151, 152-182, 183- 213, 214-244, 245-275, 276-306, 307+. On our board, we do not have anyone in the 307+ category or the 90-120 categories. To hold a record there must be more than four players competing in a weight class. We put the player's name, amount of weight they lift, and the month and year, they did it. Next to our record board are our offensive, defensive, and special team's goal boards. These boards are on the wall and they see it every day they have class.
One thing you can do that adds value to your entire program is to put together a web site. If you do not have one I recommend you put together one. We put everything on the web site for students to see. You will be amazed what you will find on our web site. It is everything you would want to know about Syracuse Titan football. The biggest thing is the tab that deals with college recruitment. We have a signing day ceremony for the players that sign scholarships. We make a big deal out of it. We hold it before school, and have highlight film of the individuals. It motivates the school and other players and it gives us a chance to visit with the parents. We invite all our younger players to the ceremony. We invite everyone to the signing party. You are honoring their achievement, getting kids excited, and it helps build your program, and promotes leadership. We are having more eighth graders coming to our program that want to play up on the sophomore team now. They want to get involved in our weight program and participate in what we do. They want to come to our school. It is good because you get to know them and they get to know the coaches. They become familiar with everything that goes on within the program and the school. It builds confidence in them and promotes the things that we stand for in our program. It promotes physical and mental toughness. Our sophomore record over the course of our program is 44-10. They learn how to win as sophomores. We get many players involved and had 60 players on the sophomore team last season. We have over 100 sign up this year. We try to play as many players as we possibly can at this level. If you do not involve them in some way, they will drift away from your program. During the season, we continue to have lunch meeting with our players. We try to squeeze out every ounce of time we can with our players. We have film meetings at lunch with them during the season. They get their lunches and we sit and watch film together. It is team building. We want our players to invest time and not just spend time in our program. Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate your attention.
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Organization in the Year Round Program
