Freshmen Not Participating in Friday Night Carb Loads

There was a mis-communication as it pertains to the Freshmen Football players participating in this coming Friday's Carbo Load with the Varsity and JV... That will NOT be happening.

Early on when Coach Martinez and I first came to Patick Henry, we introduced ourselves and our philosophy, one of the things we wanted to do is have all our players earn what were deemed as perks to being in the football program.

If you want the cool uniforms, you need to work your way onto the Varsity. If you want to play under the lights, you need to return for the JV and Varsity seasons. If you want pasta for Carb night, you need to return to the JV or Varsity to earn that right.

Freshman football, in my eyes, is the most important football program on any high school campus. If you look throughout the County, the teams with really good Varsity teams have a good Freshman program that works hand in hand with the Varsity. My job is to make football fun for the Freshmen so they the return and play the following year. My job is to teach players to play football not only at the JV level, but to compete at the Varsity level. Having 7 players from last year’s Freshmen Football team on the Varsity is a testament to that philosophy.

I am not an advocate of having the Freshman engage in the Carb Load Dinner. The premise was if the Freshmen made more money than the JV and the Varsity during the Lift-a-thon, the reward to them would be pasta dinner for the team. But that did not happen. I am satisfied our players did their best to raise money, but we came up short. Therefore, we did not earn the right to have pasta dinner.

Some folks might think they want to feed the Freshmen for the sake of team building. We had our own team BBQ after the Green and Gold game two weeks ago. The Coaches bought food and drinks, parents helped cook the food and it was a good time for fellowship and bonding between coaches and players. Afterwards, Make a Wish and Darren Shanks presented the three teams with their jerseys.

Our defense is the only team on campus to wear black jerseys. We stole the idea from the University of Nebraska and their 'Blackshirt Defense'. That is one of the few perks Coach Martinez allows us to use to motivate our players. We use the jerseys to motivate our players to compete for a starting position with those starting in front of them. Later on in the season, I will be handing out helmet stickers, or as we will call it, the Patriot Pride Award. But not everybody gets one. It has to be earned by leadership, motivation, hustle and following the principles we are teaching our young men. Nothing is given and everything is earned.

If I was to wear a t-shirt that expressed my feelings about society today, it would say, “Not everybody gets a trophy.” I want to break our players of that mind set and have them earn everything that they deserve.

Enough of me on a soapbox. I want to thank you all for the hard work you are putting into the football program. But as long as I am the Freshmen Head Coach, the Freshmen won't be participating in the Carb-load because it has not been earned… Not yet anyways.