In the “HOF Insights”, I ask a group of successful, veteran coaches to share their thoughts on a variety of topics. Each week, I ask a different question. The questions can be focused on helping coaches, parents or athletes to have a more successful athletic experience.
Coach Bob Reade at Geneseo and at Augustana was one of the all-time great high school and great college coaches. His teams won championships year after year.
Jay Hatch, Greg King, and Vic Boblett are considered legendary coaches themselves. Hatch, King, and Boblett all share something in common- they played and/or coached with Coach Reade. I have asked them to share what made Coach Reade so successful, and what they took into coaching themselves from Coach Reade.
If you are a coach or a leader, this is MUST reading!!
Jay Hatch- Riverdale
“… playing our absolute best was the standard, not the scoreboard.”
What made Coach Reade a great coach?
There are literally hundreds of ways to go with this question. I will try not to ramble on.
1. Vision – he absolutely KNEW what he wanted his team to look like. His strategy was elegant in its simplicity! His offense was going to control the ball by forcing the other team to assign more than one player to stopping the fullback. His defense was going to be sound, aggressive, and tough.
2. Organization – every Monday practice was exactly like every other Monday. The same was true of every other day of the week. In the two years I played, we had one practice that was indoors, even when our field was covered by 1.5 inches of snow! We did all of our conditioning at the beginning of practice because he didn’t want anyone pacing themselves in practice to be able to get through conditioning.
3. Psychology – I didn’t really realize it at the time, but he was a master motivator and never gave any kind of pregame speech or halftime butt chewing. We would always meet after practice and he would say something along the lines of, “Overall, we had a solid practice today, but there were a number of you who didn’t give us 100 %. That will cost us ball games.” We had over 100 players on the team and he couldn’t possibly watch every one of us. BUT, we were convinced he ALWAYS saw the one play we messed up or he noticed the one play where we didn’t do everything we could have or should have done.
4. Standards – He was the best coach I have ever been around with establishing throughout the program that playing our absolute best was the standard, not the scoreboard. I wasn’t always in our Monday film sessions because JV games were on Mondays. Toward the end of the regular season, we didn’t have JV games, so my first film session was after we had won 56-0 on Saturday. I was low on the totem pole, so I had a seat on the floor and happened to be sitting right next to our All-American guard who had been a starter for three years. We are about 2 plays into the session and this guy is hitting himself in the leg and generally berating himself for his play. Coach Reade pointed out every single example of poor effort, mental mistakes, or anyone doing less than their job. Remember, we won 56-0 that week.
Coach Reade’s Influence- What specific things do I use?
Again, I could probably go on for a long time, here.
1. Know who your horses are – Coach was phenomenal with 1. Identifying who the go-to guys were and 2. Putting those people in position to make those plays successfully. One example – Wheaton College was a big challenge for us for several years. Playing them, our starting quarterback was injured. That meant whoever was going to be playing QB for the rest of the game had never been in any kind of pressure situation in a college game. We were ahead, but the offense was struggling largely because Wheaton was run blitzing virtually every play figuring that we weren’t going to throw the ball with our backup. To get a crucial first down late in the game, coach called a half-back pass. So, he put the big play in the hands or our All-American halfback to make the play and he was throwing the ball to the best clutch player we had. Most coaches aren’t going to call for a trick play in that type of situation. As I reflected on the situation, I realized he knew that those guys were the best guys for this situation. The added bonus is the other team would NEVER expect a trick play in this situation. What coach was doing was not setting people up for failure. He wasn’t going to expect an inexperienced QB to make a play when he hadn’t had any time to build his confidence. I have always tried to keep that in mind. Specifically, don’t expect players to do things they are not capable of doing.
2. Sometimes the scoreboard is deceiving – My first year coaching softball, we played Moline in our opening game. They were a power at the time. We played a good game, but they were just better than us that day. I wasn’t really upset with anything about what we did that day. Of course, I would have preferred a different outcome. Our next game was the very next day; it was a road game against a team that was far inferior to us. We won something like 10-1. We made multiple mental mistakes – throwing to the wrong base, forgetting how many outs there were, missing signs. You name it, we messed it up. I still remember the looks on the girls’ faces when I told them truthfully that I was happier after the loss yesterday that I am after the win today. The standard is did we play our best, not whether we won or not.
3. Coach the fundamentals – Our offense was predicated on running the ball a vast majority of the time. We didn’t really have a drop back passing game – most of our passes were play-action passes. There were times in games where coach would run the same play 5 or 6 times in a row because he didn’t like our execution of the play. I heard a quote once, “I great players to great plays.” I never heard Coach Reade say that but I know he would have agreed with it completely. We could block and tackle better than pretty much everyone we played. Those are pretty good predictors of success in football.
4. It’s about the team not any individual – Coach constantly talked about the team. We had All-Americans, but they weren’t treated any differently than the least talented player on the team. We practiced live contact every Tuesday, Wednesday, & Thursday. QBs weren’t immune from contact. They were live too. There was one time when our All-American RB had a red-shirt on in practice. We couldn’t figure out what was going on until one of the assistant coaches explained that he needed to practice, but we didn’t want to have him getting hit because he was injured.
I respected Coach Reade so much. One of my most cherished mementos was a note he sent me after we won the State Championship in 2005 in basketball. I had commented in an article that the players were the key because no one wins a championship without great players. He wrote me to congratulate me and he also said that I should be proud of what the coaches had accomplished as well. He said, “While it is true that no one wins without great players, it is equally true that there are many coaches who do not win with great players.”
Greg King- Sterling
“In reality, it was him teaching me to keep it simple and don’t think too much.”
When I was given the question of what it was like to play for one of the more dominant high school coaches in the State of Illinois, as well as the standard setter in Division III Football, it had me thinking in a hundred different ways. But when describing him as a coach and in reality as a person, it is pretty simple for me….it is fundamentals. Whatever you are doing it comes down to the basics. To win football games, or to be successful in life, there are fundamentals that you must have. In football, it comes down to Blocking, Tackling, and Running Hard. Almost every segment of practice dealt with those things. The 1st part of practice were stations. This is where you also did most of your conditioning. You conditioned by working on the fundamentals of the game of football. In four years of football with Coach Reade, I do not think any team out-blocked. out-tackled, or out ran us. The key though was no out-coached us.
The fundamentals were key to everything. We had 2 rules outside of football. They were obey the law, and be a gentleman. Those our pretty simple. It does not take a huge code of conduct written by a dozen lawyers to figure it out. In 1982, we were on a roll. We had just defeated #1 ranked Baldwin-Wallace in Berea, Ohio. When we returned from the games, the dorms were empty due to Thanksgiving break. Some players lets say, not only broke the law, but were not gentlemen. They were not around for the next game. He never wavered, even though Augustana was in uncharted territory at that time. When he thought you were not giving it your best, he would let you know. For a relatively quiet man, he did go off every once in awhile! My senior year, the other captain and I were not leading like he thought we should. He brought us in to the coaches office after practice, and in his way, let us know that! He raised his voice some, but no profanity ever came out. Years later, he had a few words for me in Sterling. I was the head coach and we were playing Geneseo. We were moving the ball down the field running it. We got all the way down and I decided, let’s throw a play action pass to get an easy score. Well…that pass was picked off. After the game he sees me and in his way says….”Did you not like being successful running the ball? Or did you want to make yourself feel like a good coach by throwing it there?” In reality, it was him teaching me to keep it simple and don’t think too much.
Besides fundamentals, another trait that Coach Reade had was his ability to 11 guys in each phase of the game working together to accomplish a single goal. He kept it simple, but it required 11 guys working together as a team. There were teams that maybe were better than us. There were teams that had players that were better than some of ours. But when everyone did their job, executed together, there was no one better than the Augustana teams of the 1980’s!
Vic Boblett- Rock Island
“Who says you have to lose a game?”
Where do you start. Bob Reade was a unique individual who was a great and I do mean great football coach, but more importantly he was a coach who cared about his players and saw the game of football as an avenue to help young people grow into responsible adults. He had a profound impact on my life and so many others lives. He is the primary reason I went into coaching. If he could have such a major impact on my life why couldn’t I do the same thing for the next generation of young people.
I am in a somewhat unique position to write on this topic. I played for Bob at Geneseo High School in the 70’s and then coached with him for four years at Augustana College in the 80’s. So, I was directly involved with Bob for eight years, four as a player and four as an assistant coach, As unbelievable as it sounds, I never saw the man lose a football game in those eight years. He had a 52 game winning streak during those high school years and won four straight NCAA Division III National Championships when I was his defensive back coach.
We all know that in order to win and win consistently you have to have great players, great assistant coaches, a sound system of offense, defense and special teams and be great at the fundamentals (blocking, tackling etc.) of the game. You also had to avoid the injury bug at the right times. It also helped to win the give/away - take/away ratio. Bob’s teams had all of those things in place but every so often you would need to come up with the miracle stop or the miracle tackle, or the miracle run. Let it suffice to say every once in awhile you simply need a MIRACLE! Anytime and almost every time we needed a big play he would dial it up. There were times I swear I thought he had a direct connection with the Guy upstairs.
What Bob taught me in no particular order.
1) Fundamentals win football games. You better be a great tackling and blocking team. Everything else is secondary! What has happened to tackling these days?
2) Surround yourself with great people who love the game and what it can teach young people. Bob and I both surrounded ourselves with great people. Here are just a few. I know I have forgotten some (I am getting old) so please accept my apology:
Larry Johnsen Sr., Tom Schmulbach, Dennis Ricco, Ron Clary, Denny Diericx, Dan Rogers, Elmer Reedy, Bill Marks, Larry Kanke, Steve Durian, Jack Carrol, Greg King, Steve Ebner, Pat Mitchell, Craig Allison, Travis Mackey, Steve Ebner, Norm Allbritton, Paul Olsen, Bob Reedy, Bob Swanson
3) Discipline needs to be consistent but each situation and each individual is unique. Ex. I practically had to hit my son over the head with a 2x4 to get his attention but I could practically destroy my daughter with a look. Everybody has a different button that motivates them. As the head coach you need to find that button for each individual on your team and staff.
4) Repetition is the key to mastering all things. Do it till you get it right.
5) Fatigue makes cowards of us all. Make sure your team is in better shape than your opponent.
6) “Who says you have to lose a game.” Bob was my mentor and I wanted to learn everything I could from him so one day after practice I went to Bob and asked the following, “Bob I am trying to learn all that I can from you but I have never seen you lose a game. I am sure there are some strategies and changes you would make after a loss. Could you please lose just one game so I can see and learn how things would change after a loss. His response: “Vic there is nothing that says you have to lose a game”.
7) Everybody has a role. Those backup players play an important role in the success of your program. They must feel they are important to the program. Find everybody a role to play and then require that they do their job.
8) Hire good people to be your assistants and then let your coaches coach!
9) Involve the family’s of your assistants. There are two kinds of coaches wives. Number 1 - Happy ones who love football, and love your players just as much as you do and Number - 2 Divorced ones!
10) Tradition is a real thing - promote it. As the wins and titles mounted, you did not want to be in the group that let the string of wins end.
11) Keep learning - Go to clinics, learn from your mentors. Even after Bob had retired he would stop by my RI office present a new play or series. One year he stopped in and presented the Jet Sweep Series to me for the first time. I hesitated for awhile before I decided to implement the series. The first time we ran it, we were playing Champaign Centennial at Memorial Stadium. It went for a 65 yard touchdown. I should have put the series in earlier as soon as he brought it down.
12) Bob is the one who taught me the real fun in coaching is taking a down situation and turning it around. Everywhere I had coached before taking the RI job had been in programs that were already well established. We had just finished the state championship game versus Joliet Catholic (Mike Alstott) in 1990 when the RI job opened up. Bob told me that the most fun in coaching is taking a down situation and turning it around. I was going to be the third RI coach in five years. We won one game and lost eight that first year at RI. I went back to Bob after that season and asked him when does this fun part start? The fun did start the next year and Bob was once again right. That first conference title, and playoff bid was special.
13) Bob is the one who taught me that this game of football is special!
I will forever be indebted to Bob Reade!
No comments:
Post a Comment