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Lasting Legacy - At 70, Corky Rogers is still going strong as a member of the exclusive 400 win club.

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It was a misty, cool, December night in Florida. Things looked bleak for coach Corky Rogers and his Bolles School team from Jacksonville. The Bulldogs were trailing a powerhouse Santa Fe team 17-6 with less than a minute to play in a semifinal playoff game. Santa Fe was loaded with future NFL players. “We were just getting it taken to us,” Rogers said. “We were trying everything you could try, because nothing was working.”

In that final minute, Rogers made an adjustment and pulled out a unique formation that he’d never used. “We went to basically what you’d call an end-over formation,” he recalled. “We brought the tackle over to the same side as the tight end and the wing. We had one person left of the center, a guard. We put a wing over there to make it look like there were more people. And then we ran off-tackle with our fullback and kicked out with the guard.”

It worked. The fullback raced 70 yards for a touchdown. Rogers pulled out a two-point conversion play he’d been saving and cut the lead to 17-14. After a defensive stop, Rogers went right back to the end-over formation. It worked again, with the fullback breaking free for the winning touchdown. Bolles would go on to win the state championship the following week, Rogers’ second title in his first five seasons at the school. The year was 1993. “The defense didn’t adjust to it (end-over formation),” Rogers said. “It was just one of those things that worked that night.”

In the 21 years since, things have continued to go right for Rogers and the Bolles Bulldogs. They’ve added eight more Florida State Championships and sent well over 100 graduates to play in college. For Rogers, his 26 years and counting at Bolles plus 17 years at his alma mater Lee High School have produced over 430 wins, placing him among the all-time top ten winningest coaches – one of only eight with over 400 wins.

“It’s really not about me. It’s about the kids,” Rogers said. Humility aside, such coaching milestones are only achieved by a select few. For Rogers, some of the keys to his success have been discipline, game-planning and the Wing-T. But it all started in the weight room.

Introducing Himself

Rogers arrived at the Bolles School in 1989. He wasn’t sure how his new team would accept him and needed to find out.

He introduced himself to his new team in the weight room, where he got down on the bench press and went to work. He said he doesn’t remember how much he benched 25 years ago, but he always used to lift  300 pounds on his birthday just to show his team that he still had it.

“I think anytime you’re changing schools, you don’t know how you’re going to be accepted or not accepted,” Rogers said. “I think you have to find a way real quick to let them know what you believe in. I wanted people to understand that hard work is the reason that success will follow.”

At Lee, Rogers had a tiny weight room with one universal machine. There was no bench press and no squat racks. “We still got them to work hard with what we had,” Rogers said. “That’s more important, making sure everyone’s effort is up in the weight room.” It did help shape the career of two future Green Bay Packers that played for Rogers at Lee – running back Edgar Bennett and defensive back LeRoy Butler.
At Bolles, Rogers has a state-of-the-art weight room facility. And he makes the most of it. He attends every weight room session. He wants to show his players how important weight room effort is. With Rogers standing there, everyone is aware.

The Bulldogs are a free-weight team with an emphasis on total body and core strength. They work for eight weeks in the summer from 7:30-10 a.m. “We may not be in quite in football shape, that takes game action,” Rogers said. “But I feel like, with our summer program leading up right to the season, we’re in good shape to start the season.”

Discipline: ‘Don’t Make Too Many Rules’

Rogers was just a few years into his coaching career, when Coach Warren Kirkham, one of his predecessors at Lee , pulled him aside. Kirkham had the reputation of being a strict disciplinarian, which made his advice to Rogers somewhat surprising.

“He was strict. I think this may have been the first time he ever spoke to me,” Rogers recalled. “I remember him pulling me aside and asking me if I thought if he was a tough guy, tough coach,” Rogers said. “I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ He then said, ‘Well, let me give you one little piece of advice – don’t make many rules, because what’s going to happen is that you’re going to find out that you’re making an awful lot of exceptions. You’re not going to always follow the rules and are going to find yourself in some sticky situations.’”

To this day, Rogers has followed that advice when it comes to discipline. He does not have a posted list of rules at Bolles. But that doesn’t mean he is soft on his players. “We believe in correcting mistakes and letting people know when they’re not going hard, “Rogers said. “Kids are kids, and they give you what you demand of them.”

Rogers said he’s not a curser, although “sometimes something slips out, but not often,” but will raise his voice to get his point across. “We tell them what we expect of them,” Rogers said. “They’re young men, and they’re going to make mistakes, just like we’re going to make mistakes. I just think (discipline) is a mutual respect. We’re trying to give them the discipline that is going to make them the best. Once they understand that you’re going to be fair in your assessment, they might not always like you all the time, but they learn to respect you in that sense.”

The Wing-T

Rogers discovered what’s been the staple of his offense at a coaching clinic at the University of Florida in 1980. He was preparing to deliver a 55-minute presentation on the sprint-out passing game out of the I-formation, when he learned about the Wing-T.

Legendary Florida high school coach Gene Cox spoke before Rogers and told attendees that he had gone to the Wing-T that season. Cox’s highlight film caught Rogers’ attention.“I didn’t have any linemen coming back that had any size,” Rogers recalled. “When I looked at the film, I noticed that everything was kind of an angle block. And when Coach Cox explained it, he said that’s why he had gone to the Wing-T.”

Rogers learned what he could about the offense. He called Delaware coach Tubby Raymond, a Wing-T guru. He attended several coaching clinics. Soon, he was installing the Wing-T, a scheme he said remains the base of his offense more than 30 years later.

Fellow coaches have kidded Rogers about his loyalty to the Wing-T. Parents have told him that their quarterback son wouldn’t play for him, because he ran the Wing-T. “I guess they didn’t notice that my quarterback threw for more than 2,800 yards last season,” Rogers said with a laugh.

Rogers’ Wing-T is definitely a modern one. At Bolles, the Bulldogs throw often out of the Wing-T. They’ll also break the traditional formation by bringing three receivers to one side. In Roger’s eyes, it really isn’t radically different than some of the spread attacks that have become so popular.

“There’s an awful lot of good athletes these days, and an awful lot of smart coaches who have figured out how to get those athletes in space,” Rogers said. “But I think when it comes down to being disciplined enough to do things under tight situations, our Wing-T principals hold true quite a bit.

“Plus, if you look at the wing formation,” he added, “you’re looking at two wing backs and a wide receiver and a tight end. You have four quick receivers immediately. Well, what is the spread? It’s four quick receivers immediately. We’ve evolved, too. It’s not the tried-and-true exact Wing-T that you get out of books but the whole offense is still based around Wing-T principals.”

Even in Roger’s evolved Wing-T, the offense still comes down to five fundamental plays: The buck sweep to either side, the inside trap, the down play with a kick-out block, the double-handoffs or criss-crosses and the counter.

“Those are the staples of the Wing-T,” Rogers said. “My belief is to give them an awful lot of formations, but running the same basic plays is what we’ve attempted to do. Too many guys, in my opinion, try to do too much of everything. You just can’t do that. You have to have something that you’ve polished and attempted to perfect to fall back on.”

To polish those plays, Rogers reps them over and over in practice against the looks he’s expecting to get from opposing defenses. “You try to run them enough times against those looks that the players, when you get in the game, won’t be shocked when they bring a linebacker or something, because we’ve been over all that,” Rogers said. “I think, all in all, we’ve been consistent in the fact that we’re prepared for what the other team is going to try to do.”

It all starts with the trap. “The basic play in the Wing-T is the trap,” Rogers said. “It starts everything. It’s the same trap, but there are four, five, six ways to block it. There are little things you do to make it look like something else. It’s going to be the trap, but we try different backfield actions, motion, the quarterback spinning one way when he always goes the other way. You try to do things to offset and confuse the defense. I think that’s the way things have evolved.

“When we’re able to run the trap, it sets up everything else for us,” Rogers explained. “When the trap’s working, the linebackers can’t run outside to stop the sweep if they’re also conscious of the fullback. Our offenses that have really excelled have all been able to run the trap.

“We’ve had a quite a few defenses recently that have taken the trap away from us. It’s frustrating,” he added. “I’ve told friends that the Chinese Army could be in front of us and I’d think we can run the trap against them.”

Game-Planning

Rogers wasn’t always blessed with a dozen assistants like he has now at Bolles. He can remember how long it took to create game plans as a member of a three-man staff. The process is much easier these days, but the priorities of formulating an effective game plan have remained the same.

The Bolles staff meets Saturday and Sunday to review film from their previous game and breakdown film of the next opponent. Rogers delegates game-planning responsibilities to each of his assistants. There’s a stats guy and someone in charge of exchanging film with opponents as well as an additional coach assigned to the offensive and defensive elements of the opponent.

When reviewing film of their own games, the staff looks at plays from both end zone and sideline angles. Ideally, they’ll watch film from the opponent’s two most recent games in addition to any Bolles footage from recent meetings against them.

By Sunday, Roger’s staff begins to mesh the game plan together. On Monday, he gives the defense the basic plays the other team is running with pass routes. The offense receives information on how the defense lines up to each of the Bulldogs’ formations.

By Tuesday, coaches hand out the complete game plan, including the plays to run against those defensive looks. The game plan generally fits on the front and back of a full size sheet of paper.

“You try to compare what they’re doing best with your strengths and weaknesses,” Rogers said. “Then, you look for strengths and weaknesses in their personnel and try to put people in position to make plays. It’s not really the plays that make it work; it’s putting people in position to use the abilities that they have. You want to use formations that are going to cause them to have to put certain people in certain situations. If that’s a good matchup for you, personnel-wise, it might me something that’s we put a little check by.”

The Road Ahead

At age 70, with nearly 450 wins and counting, Corky Rogers has nothing left to prove in his coaching career. Yet retirement isn’t on his immediate horizon. “At this stage, it’s year-to-year,” he said. “I’ll see how things are going and how I feel and all those kind of things. I hope to keep working, but we’ll have to see.” Regardless of how many more wins he tallies at Bolles, his coaching legacy as one of high school’s all-time greats is secure.

Wins aside, when Rogers reflects back on his years coaching, it’s the rewards of working with young athletes as they mature that is most satisfying. “It’s really seeing young men come in at age 14 and following their overall development as student-athletes. Not only physically, but also becoming mentally tough,” he said. “Just what the game does to young men, for any of us who have coached, I think that’s the biggest thrill that we see.”







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