Team leaders support Adams as head football coach
by Garret Miller and Ethan Vigna, Staff Writers and Varsity Football Captains
All coaching positions in the Leechburg Area School District offer only a one-year contract. Usually, however, coaches remain for as long as they want to coach – with a glaring exception in the football program. This year the school board recently interviewed four applicants for the varsity head football coaching job, leaving three-year head coach Mark Adams and his team feeling as if his job is definitely on the line.
However, the majority of the team does not feel that it is Coach Adams’ time to go. As incoming seniors and returning captains, we would like to express how we feel and why we feel the way we do.
Longevity: The incoming senior class has grown with Coach Adams since our freshman year. He stepped up to the head coaching job when former coach Ed Jenkins walked out on the team. The players have developed a deep level of respect for him, and he shows similar respect towards his players.
Strength: Many do not know that the football team has been lifting five days a week since November. During our time, we have been increasing our strength and conditioning for the upcoming season. Even though Coach Adams cannot attend every lifting session because of his job, assistant Coach Pearson, along with the other assistant coaches, provides an excellent strength program for us. Our numbers have dramatically increased since Coach Adams installed our lifting program.
New Weight Room: When Coach Adams started as head coach at Leechburg, we had to lift at the school’s weight room, one that is in poor condition and is shared with every Leechburg sports team. Coach Adams took it upon himself, along with the Gridiron Club, to install a new weight room at the football field. Finding funding through donations from various businesses and various fundraisers, he literally started from scratch to purchase the new equipment required to prepare players for football, turning the old storage room at the field into a fully functional weight room.
Opportunity: This upcoming season, the Leechburg football team can field 16 returning seniors. The number of seniors this year is more than that of the past five years combined. We believe these numbers alone show the commitment the team shows towards Coach Adams. Players tend to quit playing on a losing team, especially when they don’t respect the coach. That players have stuck with the program reflects the level of respect the team has for Coach Adams. Fielding a team with 16+ seniors brings a great deal of opportunity because players have more experience and knowledge of the game than they have ever had in recent Leechburg football history.
Bringing a new coach into the system would only make matters worse. The move would force us to once again start from square one. With a roster like the one we will have this coming season, a new coach would be detrimental to our chances of experiencing a successful season.
In recent years, it seems as if Leechburg football coaches have been fired and replaced almost as often as the seasons change. When the football team doesn’t win, people place the blame on the coaches, especially the head coach – and out goes that head coach, replaced quickly with a new one who must start from scratch all over again.
We realize that we players are to blame too. Let us repeat that – we players are also to blame. Losing is not always the coach’s fault. After all, we’re the ones on the field playing the game. Our deficiencies have been lack of experience, lack of strength and lack of opportunity – but never a lack of desire. However, we have never had a coach long enough to allow a program and a team to be built.
For the past three years Coach Adams has been building a team, our team, a team we are proud to be a part of in spite of the numbers in the win-loss column. What we want is a chance to prove ourselves our senior year – and we want that chance to be with the person who brought us along, provided opportunities for us and respects us. We want to play for the coach who has believed in us all along the way while teaching us to believe in ourselves.
We want Coach Adams to reap the rewards of the team he has built. We urge the school board to rehire Coach Adams and give him the same chance for success that he has given us.
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