Coaches Confidential: What is the hardest part of a high school football coach's job?

What do Southwest Florida football coaches think about various topics affecting their sport?

We granted area coaches anonymity and asked them thought-provoking questions in a new series called, "Coaches Confidential." We tried to vary topics so coaches could give their insight on area players and coaches, places they'll play, and challenges they'll face. The answers are anonymous answers for max honesty will appear throughout the 2023 season.

Today's question: What is the hardest part of a high school football coach's job and why?

Previous Coaches Confidential: Who's the most underrated Southwest Florida football player entering 2023?

Here are the top responses and comments:

Pressure on players

"I think some of it's the expectations and the pressures, the undue pressures that come down, I think from the top down, and you hear earlier and earlier people talking about scholarships, you know, freshman scholarship, gotta play varsity, need to get a scholarship, coaches need to offer money. And all that stuff's important, and I don't want to discount any of that, but it takes away some of the fun sometimes, puts a little bit too much pressure in the situation on the kids and things like that. The business aspect of what you're seeing in college football, I think, is starting to trickle down to high school. And, from everything I hear, the NIL is coming. And there's already colleges constantly talking and tweeting, and texting and messaging and scholarships. If you include money, now it really is a business and you're getting rid of the amateurism and, not that that's an awful thing that, maybe the money is diverted and spread if there isn't enough money there. But it takes a little bit of the innocence away, for sure, and just creates another whole set of challenges."

Finding passionate players

"One of them I think is just the love of the game. I think it's so many other things that the kids are entertained with - they just don't love the game, I feel, any more like how we did when we grew up, and then once you do find kids that love the game, in our area particularly, it's so many high schools in the area. So the biggest thing is grooming the kids that do love the game for three years and then maybe they're not as successful at that school as they might want to be and then transfer out. So that's kind of the biggest frustration as far as high school goes - the turnover rate and them not just loving the game as much as we did when we were coming up."

"Just dealing with this generation of kids, you know, kids skipping practice for, 'I've got a dentist appointment and parents, my mother scheduled a last minute vacation when she knew all along we started on July 31. It's a different generation, you have to adapt to that. The kids that come to practice and work their butts off are the kids are going to play. I would have never in my life thought about missing a practice. So dealing with that is very frustrating at times."

Previous Coaches Confidential: Who's the top Southwest Florida defensive football player entering 2023?

All the details

"It's just a lot of paperwork. Now you got to watch over everything. I mean you can't even really put an assistant in charge, you've got to kinda hover over everybody, because everything comes from the top. So it's just one of those things, you got to know that it's hot, you've got to have your good trainer, which we do. We have great trainers, so got water in place, we got to cold tubs in place, got the ice in place. I have a staff finally that's been together six, seven years, so it makes it easy, but for the young guys, it's probably really rough right now just trying to get acclimated to being a head coach."

"The toughest part is all the stuff that goes around, you know, trying to get them what they need. Sometimes you feel like you're fighting 19 fires at one time. I mean, it's like, I just wanna get out to practice to be able to coach. ... In my time we've gone through two major hurricanes and COVID. It's tiring, I'll be honest, there's times I wake up in the morning and I'm like, 'Damn, I'm exhausted.'"

"I call it the red tape, it's all the things you have to do and take care of that aren't actually coaching. So, paperwork is a nightmare, getting their physicals and insurance and all that stuff. Making sure everybody has rides to practice, making sure everybody has food. When one of your player's girlfriend breaks up with them, or they have a bad math test, or their parents are upset with them, and monitoring or navigating all of the private trainers and all-star teams and all that stuff. Because some of those guys are in it to take money from kids, some of whom are in it for all the right reasons to help kids get better, and everywhere in between. To me, the hardest part of being a football coach is all the things that fall onto your plate. All the certifications on stuff that are not actually coaching football, coaching football is what we love to do."

Previous Coaches Confidential: Which SWFL football program has the best home-field advantage?

Recruiting

"Having to basically be a recruiter, even when it's not the college rules? I mean, it's been interesting how quickly people are able to find housing in the tough housing market. But it's kind of you know, you're always having to recruit kids to stay at your school and not have to bounce around. It's been kind of a thing."

The Weather

"You know, honestly, for me personally, when we're in season, the weather. Planning, you can have the best practice plan in the world, but it's gonna get blown up because you're gonna get lightning you know, and those types of things. I think our first four games last year were all lightning delayed and then we have the hurricane and those types of things that heat, so you have to make sure that you have a good plan and then a contingency plan and then a plan after that to make sure that things run smooth."

"The biggest issue we've been dealing with right now is the heat. Everything's about keeping the kids safe and I support that but we had to find a way to be able to also prepare them to play the game safely. So the heat is a challenge because it limits the amount of equipment we can wear, it limits the amount of practice time we get, and it limits the amount of live repetitions we get. So it's hard to balance player safety when it comes to heat exhaustion, and then player safety when it comes to actually being able to physically perform the game in a safe manner."

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Coaches Confidential: What is the hardest part of being a high school football coach?