With a great ongoing season and only one loss, the freshmen football team is 6-1. Head freshman coach Frederick Schmidt has been coaching for nine years and has helped pave the way for his players to achieve their wins.
“I would say there are two parts to it. The first part is they bought into the new system. They come into zero-hour weights. They put in their work each day. As a coaching staff, all the freshmen work with different varsity coaches, all the position groups, so unlike a lot of schools we have our freshmen work with their individual coach for their position that also coach varsity,” said Schmidt.
Practices have evolved throughout the year. For half of practice, the freshman does offense with the varsity offensive coaches and then transition to defense with the varsity defensive coaches. They also run scout teams, which has been big for the team’s ability to make good plays and stops.
Even the most successful teams have to tackle difficult challenges and make improvements. With the jump from middle school to high school and a new group of players, being able to learn new things is crucial to the team’s success.
“There’s so much of a learning curve because we all have a new defense and there’s a new offense, so just getting them to buy into the new system and how things are done differently than they have been in the past,” said Schmidt.
The team stays motivated through the season knowing their future opportunities. Coaches work on building strong players now for unbeatable players in the future.
“The thought of just getting better each week and just knowing that this is, as a freshman, it’s your last year to play just with the freshmen but it’s also playing to the future, so these kids are building a foundation for when they’re sophomores and juniors and seniors,” said Schmidt.
Though the varsity team has not been able to bring home a win, all players work hard, but the challenge level isn’t the same for the freshmen. Many factors play into being able to win games. The varsity team faces opponents with players who are older and have more experience working in the system they have. With the freshmen team having a good number, the lack of players on the varsity team makes a difference in game results as they don’t have enough players for subs and most players have to play both sides of the ball.
“I would say there’s not much difference, it’s just playing varsity is a lot different than playing freshmen games … They all work hard. They all do their jobs, it’s just different competition levels,” said Schmidt.