The Rock Academy Warriors made a jump from 11-man to 8-man football this year. We were a combined 2-17 the past two seasons in 11-man when I was an assistant on the coaching staff. This season we finished at 7-3 (2-2 league) and made playoffs for the first time in school history. We earned the No. 2 seed and beat Ocean View Christian Academy, 55-30, on Nov. 13. We advanced to the championship game in Escondido on Nov. 20, but lost 68-8 to Calvin Christian.
My big goal taking over this program was to get players believing in themselves. They had experienced so much losing over the course of their high school careers in every sport they played. I wanted to show them that it doesn’t have to be like that. With hard work and dedication coupled with a nudge in the right direction, I knew that they had the potential to do more individually and be more as a team. Initially, they were a little skeptical about the jump to 8-man. However, it was always the right decision for our program, as we have little more than 100 students in the high school and only 15 players total on the team. I had experience in both 11- and 8-man football and assured them that it was the exact same game. Secondly, I think they were a little skeptical of, once again, having a new coach, the seniors’ third one over their high school careers.
From day one, I told them that I had lofty goals that might seem crazy based on their past experiences. However, I told them that our mantra would be “Win the Day”; essentially, take it one day at a time, one play at a time, one rep at a time, and just focus on doing their best physically and mentally in each individual moment. I didn’t want them to get overwhelmed with the big picture or high expectations. Rather, we’ve (the coaching staff) always preached taking it one step at a time with mental toughness and high effort and allowing the results to take care of themselves.
On the field, specifically, my goal was to get back to the basics of fundamental football. We’ve focused on being fundamentally sound in blocking, tackling and taking care of the football. Schemes and X’s and O’s are secondary. We believe that being fundamentally sound will allow us to be successful in any offensive and defensive scheme known to man. We’ve never wavered from our commitment to drilling the fundamentals. Especially on a team so small, it’s important that every single player can block, tackle and take care of the football, because you never know when you might be called up to a certain position.
When our first game versus Warner came, I could tell that our players were excited and ready, yet they still had a lingering feeling that it was going to be another long season: that “here we go again” feeling where they expected bad things to happen. However, when we forced and recovered a fumble on the opening kickoff, turned it into a score and never looked back, it suddenly clicked for our players that they were good and had what it took to be successful. We went on to win that game 72-6, and all of the sudden, we could see the confidence we had hoped to instill flowing through our team. Business as usual went from expecting to lose to expecting to win.
The important thing from that point on was maintaining focus and not getting too high when things go well so that we didn’t crash when things inevitably didn’t go our way. The football season is so long that you’re bound to have a game go against you at times. We wanted to make sure they stayed even-keeled and focused on the moment regardless of the score.
Out of our 15 players, seven are seniors, seven are juniors and we have one freshman (also our only female player). We have five captains (seniors Max Pion-Kentel, John Garwood and Jordan Mitchell; juniors Colin Mowers and Jason Na). They’ve done a great job of refocusing our players and keeping us motivated.
Mitchell is our passing leader (1,507 yards), rushing leader (841 yards) and scoring leader (92 points). Pion-Kentel finished with 545 rushing yards despite only playing five games due to a dislocated elbow. Seniors Junior Alvarez and Garwood are our receiving leaders with 487 yards and 457 yards, respectively. Alvarez leads our team with 81 tackles and Na leads with nine sacks.
Rali Schwartz is the head coach of the Rock Academy Warriors.