BE,
If you didnt win anymore games focusing on "skill" than you did on "fundamentals" whats the difference?
I missed your question, sorry. We all realize it takes time to develop sports specific skills and fundamentals, right. But remember to set your goals high, not low. Many times a team is hamstrung by a coach who sets his team and individual goals too low. I did that for two years myself after initially trying to develop some ideas I got from Mitch Lee, Nelson Campbell and Doyle Clawson. But after applying those ideas for three or four weeks I panicked and pulled my goals why back to something I could feel good about immediately...it was like instant gratification...why wait for a delicious roast with all the trimmings when I could slap together a peanut butter and jelly in ninety seconds. That was my mentality.
It wasn't until I was at RS that I saw the benefits of aiming as high as it would take to challenge the best teams. Jared Hicks had to step from five years of playing runningback and receiver to being our spreadback , and that shift didn't totally happen for months. Sure, he could score 64 tds on the ground, but unless he accomplished some good measure of passing skill, our season was going to end against a Gordon, Calvert or Strawn. While he was still struggling to find his throwing ability we accomplished putting together a very good rushing attack.
Let me tell you how that occurred. After four weeks of two-a-days and scrimmages it was clearly apparent that Jared was not going to be able to get the ball to our second best player that year Logan Lewis, who had developed into an all-state caliber receiver during his freshman and soph. years. Coach Clawson knew that the best players must touch the ball as often as possible if we hoped to beat the best teams we would surely face down the road. The Saturday before our first game he made the decision to move Logan from receiver to Spread Upback and Jaybird QB. I was amazed at his decision because it would involve moving Logan from a position he mastered and dearly loved to one that demanded pitching and lead blocking for the SB most of the time...from a somewhat glamour position to one that required a workhorse mentality. Of course Logan would be the primary target for the dump pass, too. But without a strong pass threat coach realized our running attack would have to be stellar.
On Monday while in the huddle coach summarized our situation and then informed Logan of his permanent position change. Their was no debate or feeling out process. He just simply looked at Logan for a good ten or fifteen seconds and said "we need you to go to upback". Upon hearing this Logan stepped one leg out of the huddle, staired at the ground until the team broke huddle and moved to upback from that moment until the day we won state a year and a half later. And after a short adjustment period of maybe two days, he became one of the best upbacks RS ever produced. His pitching and chopblocking became the best we ever had in my six years at that school. That young man could cut a rusher in half when we needed a sweep like nobody I have ever seen before or since.
I got off point. The fact is that as a coach you have to make a decision to devote the best attempt possible to develop your team's skills, and in the above case Clawson's faith payed off for our running game and carried us until Jared eventually found his arm later in the season. Had he chosen the cowardly way and decided against moving Logan beause of his love and comfort at the receiver position, who knows how our season would have developed. As it was we barely beat Austin Regents and Valley Christian early in the season. And neither of them were shabby teams--Regents was in the middle of three consecutive TAPPS championships and Valley Christian would win two New Mexico titles in a row. They were incredibly talented. Clawson did a brilliant job defensively against them, but that's a story for another day. I think Logan's willingness to sacrifice his preference made us thirty points better, without which we would have lost to both of those private schools.
By setting our indidvidual and team goals higher than it appeared we could reach, our players eventually rose to the challenge and mastered their responsibilities well enough to get to the state semi-finals. And let me add that coming into that season after losing three of the best seniors in RS history, the season looked somewhat challenging, even bleak on paper. Two of the players who would have to step up and contribute on both sides of the ball played jv the entire regular season the year before. And three others sat on the varsity bench and rarely saw action the year before. I remember one discussion after the first week of two-a-days in the coaches' office when a season record of 7-4 or 8-3 was probable if our guys didn't step up in major ways. And they did. I shouldn't say this but my first impression of John Poe in 2002 on the jv was that he would have fit right in at the school i was at before RS, and we won one varsity game in two years there. But during the course of the season he matured into a dependable defensive lineman and by the following year we used him without a second thought on offense as well. In fact during our playoff run to the champioship the next year John was our second leading receiver in tds during the playoffs behind Pablo. And if not for his all-state presence in 2004 on both sides of the ball I doubt we would have made it to the state game, let alone win it.
In retrospect, had I done the same thing at Hermleigh we would have won more than one game. I have to be honest with myself...because of my lack of coaching ability and faith we were beaten by several teams we should have beaten had I applied the same strategy we used at RS. I'm not saying we would have competed for a district title, absolutely not. But we probably lost at least three games my first year there because of the low goals I set for us. I had the correct goals early, then lowered them after a few weeks. As a result I caused the players to be a team of underachievers.
I apologize for the novel...i need to get a life.
Even so, that gift was improved every year, intentionally.