Grateful coaches

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Football coaches are routine-oriented by nature. Aside from the health concerns brought upon by the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone’s normal schedule was completely thrown out the window last fall.

Many coaches admitted to learning the value of certain aspects of preseason camp, team building activities and much more. The 2020 season definitely included many obstacles, including the absence of spring practices, teams not being able to meet in full and the forfeiture of games due to COVID-19 issues.

The hope is the 2021 season is void of those game cancellations and the season is able to go off without a hitch.

One thing all coaches agree on is the relief of being able to get back to doing certain things, such as going through spring practice and having the entire team together throughout the summer months leading up to the season.

Here’s what some of the local coaches had to say about the challenges and lessons learned from last fall and the excitement level of getting back into that routine they are so accustomed to:

That’s the hardest part of human nature, because last summer was the greatest summer ever in terms of gratitude and working together. But as you get into a routine, a lot of people tend to forget that. It’s still something I’ve tried to bring up a couple times this summer, aren’t we grateful to be out here this summer?

Matthew Forester, Briarwood

It’s really good to be able to get everybody together. That was a big hurdle that everybody had to face last year and it never made the season feel normal. There’s a lot of culture and team building that you’re able to do now that you weren’t able to do before. The game is about team and together.

Dustin Goodwin, Chelsea

Considering everything we went through with COVID and having a new [coaching] staff, it’s pretty remarkable, because we didn’t have a lot of time, didn’t have spring practice, didn’t have a lot of time to get the team to jel, no opportunity to get the team bonding. A lot of it was done right there at the fieldhouse and on the field. It was very special. It was probably my most memorable year in football.

Sam Shade, Pinson Valley

It’s been great. I’m tickled to death that we have to work around construction as opposed to working around something we don’t know the end point (the pandemic). It’s so refreshing. We learned a lot from COVID. We’re still taking a lot of the learning techniques and teaching techniques from that. We still do Zoom calls with our players on days we don’t have practice. There’s a lot of great things that came from that. The most incredible thing if you were a football player that you learned, your life kept going. You were figuring out trying to find a way to move forward. What a great lesson that was.

Chris Yeager, Mountain Brook

Last year, I just scrapped the calendar. Every Sunday I’d sit down and send a weekly email to the parents and that would change four or five times. To get through what we did last year, it was amazing.

Shawn Raney, Spain Park