Practice Visit: University of South Florida

  written by Coach Mitch Disney
  Jan 11, 2012
Offensive Line Coach
Tarpon Springs High, FL



I had an opportunity to take a promotion this past season and I took it. I was very happy being the Head JV Coach at my alma mater Seminole High School. I saw that Tarpon Springs High School, which is a great Tampa Bay Area football program, needed a varsity offensive line coach and I after applying, interviewing, and finally deciding to take the offer, I was now a part of the Tarpon High.

It was refreshing to arrive there and see a lot of good athletes and a head coach with a relentless motor. Head coach Atif Austin was previously the running back coach at the University of Northern Iowa and had played football at Iowa State. Coach Austin also had a great staff starting to form in his second year. We went out and dominated our spring game and everything looked like it everything would be smooth sailing and the regular season started with the same outlook.

We started out 2-0 and beat our opponents by a combined score of 93-20. Then, adversity started to become our neighbor, piece by piece. A former player from last year's team died at the beginning of the week heading into our biggest rival. The players were of course distracted by something bigger than any game. On top of it, this game was also broadcasted locally. The game did not end well. We flat out got beat that night. The dominos started to roll. We had to bench three of our starters for missing practice for the next game and our number one receiver was sidelined for two games, along with 5 other starters. During the next game, our center was kicked out of the game for fighting and suspended three games. We somehow pulled that game off and we were still sitting pretty at 3-1 and 1-0 in the district. Then, more dominos fell.

I was in the middle of looking at game film during a break from school on a Wednesday when our def. coordinator walks in with a pale look in his face and he broke the news to me, "They are firing Atif right now." Coach Austin was dismissed as the head coach for reasons I am still not sure of. My first reaction was devastation because I grew close with him and he has helped me grow as a coach in so many ways. My second reaction was, " Holy Toledo, we have a game in two days! We just lost our head coach/oc/special teams coach. We got work to do!!" Of course, it was tough because of the distraction, the media attention it got, and the players that we still had out, not to mention we had to play the game without our senior QB, who suffered a concussion. We were down by two touchdowns at two different points in the game but somehow pulled out a win in the 4th quarter. Over a three game span, we went 2-1 with a all underclassmen offensive line. As the o-line coach, I was extremely proud of my boys.

The dominos took another spill as we lost our kicker as his family moved. "What next," is all I could think to myself. A couple of district losses took us out of the playoff race and it looked like we might not even finish with a winning record. That is when the will to overcome adversity and be winners really showed from the players and coaches. Even though we were understaffed, we did twice the work and met on Saturdays and Sundays. How hard we worked reflected on our players as they showed no quit and had some great come-from-behind wins and we ended up finishing the season 6-4, a two game improvement from last season.

The reason I am rambling on about our season is because as coaches and players, you have to prepare for sudden change. Football is like life in so many ways; it is not how you act, it is how you react. Life has sudden changes, just like a football game, or even a football season has. Turnovers, injuries, bad calls, players coming/going, coaches getting hired/fired, etc; the show goes on. You can really see the character of your fellow coaches and players by how they react when things don't go as planned. Loyalty, hard work, energy, and pure relentless is the formula that got us through our season, and I believe it is the qualities that are needed to not only be successful, but to survive.



More from Coach Disney
Mar 1: Get After People With the Screen Game
Apr 19: Practice Visit: USF