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An Adjustment No One Wants to Make

by: Mike Kuchar
Senior Writer, American Football Monthly
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Funny how we always tell our players that football is like life. We have our ups and downs and we learn how to juggle both of them without compromising our integrity or losing our dignity. About a month ago, our starting senior middle linebacker and one of the nicest kids, went down with a severe knee injury. But it wasn’t during practice, it was in the minutes leading up to it. As he was taking his introductory lap before our stretch he had the bright idea (we know they don’t always use deductive reasoning) of leaping over a stationary garbage barrel. He landed incorrectly, nearly shattering one of the nerves in his left leg. He lay for 30 minutes with no movement at all in his leg while the entire practice halted – somehow focusing on how to stop the power play has no merit when one of your kids is screaming, “I can’t feel my leg.” To make a long story short, he wound up tearing his MCL, his PCL and suffered extensive nerve damage in his leg to the point where he needs what looks like a slingshot to just to keep his foot up. To this day, he is still being home schooled. Senior season over, football career quite possibly over, just because he was excited to practice.

I’m sure we all have our stories that ground us – this just happened to be mine. What do we do now? There was no manual on this. We couldn’t go into our research to find a solution something like this. We had to make adjustments. As a staff we had to undergo somewhat of an overhaul. It wasn’t just a loss in personnel, we lost the heart and soul of our football team that day and it was a struggle to keep our kids focused from that point forward. But I was reminded of words that a well-respected coach in another sport, Duke’s Mike Krzyzsewski, had once said, “Put on the face your team needs you to see.” As distraught as we were as a staff, we had to make our adjustments and move on. We all handle adversity and learn to move forward. It’s what makes or breaks good coaches and essentially it makes or breaks us as people.

In this issue we have an article centered around a different kind of adjustment, the ones we need to make at halftime. Every coach has their own style of handling those twenty minutes and we presented three successful coaches and the methods they use. So as you read our November issue, we hope this finds you in a good position to make a run for a title – whether it be a division, conference or state championship. Chances are you had to make some minor tweaks or major renovations to get where you are, and you’ll most likely need to make a few more before bringing it all home.

Yours in football,

Mike Kuchar
Senior Writer
American Football Monthly
MikeKuchar@AmericanFootballMonthly.com






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