Ways to Turn a Season Around – Four Coaches Have Proven Ways to Help Turn a Season Around After a Struggling Start

Dan Rohn Grand Rapids West Catholic High School (MI)

    In 2013, Coach Dan Rohn’s Grand Rapids West Catholic team started the season 1-4 – and went on to win the Michigan state championship. In 2012, West Catholic started 1-3 – and reached the state championship game. In Rohn’s first eight seasons, West Catholic won its season opener only three times. It’s all part of the plan.
    “We gear everything toward being the best football team in November,” Rohn told AFM fresh off winning West Catholic’s second straight Michigan Division 5 state title. “You don’t win a state championship in August. You prepare yourself (as a head coach), your kids, your coaching staff, your entire program to be there at the end of the season.”
    Everything from summer camps to in-season strength and conditioning to even the schedule are designed with an eye toward playoff time, which is referred to as the second season at West Catholic. August practices are focused on technique and alignment. During the season, the playbook is pared down to the plays that best fit the team’s strengths. Heading into the second season, wrinkles are then built off those plays, and players are required to come in for an extra day of film work.
    Throughout the season, the Falcons lift three times a week – Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday – in addition to  speed-and-agility work on Thursday. They are looking to increase strength and build players up in September and October. “We believe 15- and 16-year-old kids can continue to get stronger,” Rohn explained. “Now, college is a different philosophy. College kids are much stronger. They’re lifting much heavier weights, so you have to be smart about it. But these are young kids, who are still getting stronger every day. Our philosophy is to continue to build that, and it’s been extremely successful for us. When we get around the playoffs, out of our 43-man roster, we’re still carrying 41 or 42 kids.”
    Early in the season, Rohn consistently schedules proven competition, often from larger classifications. With West Catholic being one of the smallest schools in their division, playing against larger schools early in the season pays dividends in the second season.
    “We want to play games (early in the season) to evaluate who we are, what we’re doing,” he said. “We want to scrimmage the best teams. When we get to the playoffs, we’re one of the smallest teams in Division 5. We feel like, because of our schedule, we’re physically and mentally prepared to battle against larger teams.”
    Rohn says that his kids are able to look past the sting of losing early games, because of West Catholic’s proven track record in November. “Nobody wants to start 1-4 or 0-3, which we’ve done for two years and still made it to a state championship game,” Rohn said. “If you do start 1-4 or 0-3, you’re evaluating yourself, sticking to your philosophy. We lost to some good football teams, made some mistakes, but we still need to stay the course. And when Nov. 1 rolls around and the playoffs start, we’re healthy, we’re stronger than we were in August, we’re faster than we were in August, and we’re ready to compete against the best teams in the state of Michigan in our division.”

Dave Bors Riverside High School (OH)

    Knowing the end result, Riverside coach Dave Bors can laugh about it now, but, at the time, the sympathy coming down over the headset from the coaches’ box was not comforting.
    The Beavers had been outscored 148-17 during an 0-4 start to the 2010 season, Bors’ first as head coach at Riverside. A lot contributed to the difficult start. Bors changed schemes, replacing the Beavers’ pro-style attack with the triple option and moving from an angling, slanting 3-4 to a gap-control 4-3. But more than schemes needed to be changed.
    Winless, Riverside was on the road against local rival Harvey in week five. The Beavers had owned this series, winning the last 18 meetings. Despite the tough start, expectations among the fan base and community were that Riverside would beat Harvey. But things didn’t start well. Harvey returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown. The chatter on the headsets began.
    “Poor Dave, poor, poor Dave,” said the concerned assistants up in the box, not knowing that Bors was on the headset. “They were feeling sorry for me,” Bors recalled with a chuckle. “I was going to be the one that was going to end the streak (against Harvey).”
    Luckily, the Beavers didn’t waste time feeling sorry for themselves. Instead, they mounted a rally, tying the game late and sending it into overtime. Riverside took the lead in overtime, but surrendered a touchdown to Harvey on its possession. Noting the situation – his team 0-4, desperate for a first win, especially against a local rival – Bors called an all-out block in the ensuing extra point. The defensive end got skinny, broke free and blocked the kick, giving the Beavers a 28-27 win.
    “That’s when it started clicking,” Bors said.
    The Beavers won their next three games and finished at 4-6, planting the seeds for a turnaround at Riverside. But there was still plenty of work to do. Bors needed to change the culture, something that was going to take more than scheme changes. And really, the scheme was one of the least important elements, he said. Turning things around in 2010 and for the program going forward was all about changing the culture.
    When Bors and his staff arrived at Riverside, around 20 players were attending team workouts. Five years later, Bors says he has 75-80 players in the conditioning program.
    “It’s a grind, a fight and whatever clichés you want to use,” he said. “But, ultimately, we stuck with our plan, focused on fundamentals and got things going in the right direction. There wasn’t this magic formula or pill. It was just the kids buying in and trusting the plan and just not wavering. Attitude, effort and body language – something we preach all the time. Just give us those things. Give us great body language, don’t put your head down, don’t loaf on the field, hustle everywhere.”
    Riverside entered the 2015 season having had three straight winning campaigns, a first for their program.

Mike Neubeiser  Northwest High School (MD)

    His team off to a sloppy, uneven start, featuring an extremely flat performance in a Saturday afternoon loss, Coach Mike Neubeiser needed to make some changes. In the process, he sparked a state championship run by diversifying the passing game and maximizing his players’ individual strengths.
    “You just have to grind; keep trying different things and moving pieces around,” said Neubeiser, who led the Jaguars to the state championship in 2013 and 2014.
    They began the 2013 season struggling to run the ball behind an inconsistent offensive line. The coaching staff made a change at center and, instead of trying to improve the running game, Neubeiser got more creative in the passing game. They utilized the spread formation more, added in more screens and used the run game as a change-up.
    Defensively, they maximized the strengths of an outside linebacker who excelled at rushing the passer, but struggled in pass coverage, by simply moving him around the field and blitzing him on every play. “That season, it seemed like every player had his individual strengths, so we basically tried to maximize each of those,” Neubeiser said.
    The Jaguars started the season with three straight wins, but they committed sloppy penalties, and the effort just wasn’t there. The turning point came on a Saturday in October, after a 26-6 loss to Gaithersburg. “They understood (after that game) that what we were doing was not enough,” Neubeiser recalled. “They adjusted. I didn’t have to say too much.”
    The coaches did some self-evaluation and decided they needed to increase the demand. They informed players that starting positions were up for grabs. The intensity increased during the following Monday’s practice.
    “We tried to make things more competitive,” Neubeiser said. “We don’t have a lot of yellers on our staff. We like to explain and teach. We didn’t yell much, but instead put them in positions where it would be more competitive. We tried to incorporate more individual things like wide receivers vs. defensive backs, the best against the best. We did the same thing with offensive and defensive linemen. That gets a little physical sometimes, but we thought it was necessary in order to pick up our intensity.”
    Looking back, Neubeiser believes that week of intensified practice was a major catalyst in the Jaguars’ state championship run.

Rick Rhoades  Cameron Yoe High School (TX)

    The Cameron Yoe Yoemen won their third straight Texas state championship in 2014. The Yoemen started out 2-4 that season. And, of course, despite Coach Rick Rhoades’ track record of success, there were some grumblings around the community about the disappointing start to the season.
    “What I’ve learned in 31 years of coaching,“ Rhoades said. “There are always going to be people out there complaining, and when you’re 2-4. You probably have more naysayers. But I never talk bad about our kids or bad about our team. If we lose, it’s always my fault. I take the pressure off my kids and always put it on me.”
    Having won two state championships a row, there wasn’t too much complaining, and Rhoades says he’s learned throughout his illustrious career not to let it bother him. But he was concerned about his team after it dropped to 2-4 with a loss to district rival Rockdale to open October. That would be the Yoemen’s last loss, though, and they’d even get revenge on Rockdale in December, thanks to a personnel adjustment Rhoades and his staff made ahead of the rematch.
    In the first meeting with Rockdale, Rhoades’ secondary had surrendered multiple big pass plays that led to a 34-27 loss. Going into the rematch in the quarterfinals of the state playoffs, Rhoades knew he needed an answer. “The second time that we played them we used some of our better receivers in the secondary in passing situations,” Rhoades said. “One of them picked off a ball and took it back for a touchdown in the game. If we did any tweaking, I think it was with personnel. We just tried to get a little bit better athlete in the secondary for certain situations.”
    Cameron Yoe beat Rockdale 42-25 in the rematch and stuck with the new secondary personnel for the final two games of the playoffs. It resulted in a 12-4 season and another state championship for a team that was physically conditioned for each opponent.
    “I go through the schedule and try to manipulate the reps and the sets according to who our opponent is,” Rhoades said. “If it’s going to be a pretty tough opponent, we’re going to lift pretty heavy, pretty close to our max, that week. When we’re getting ready to play a big game, we’ll lift heavy that week. I feel like it gets us mentally ready, physical ready to play in a big  game.”

    Bad seasons can be turned around, but rarely does it take drastic scheme changes. More often, based on the above examples, a turnaround comes from self-evaluation, persistence, effort and a minor tweak here or there.
    “You just have to keep grinding,” Neubeiser concluded.  p