O Line Skills

There are football games on the schedule, and then there are rivalry games.

The 121st playing of “The Game” between St. Johnsbury Academy and Lyndon Institute is something special.

You can feel it in the days leading up to kickoff. The conversations change on campus and throughout the community. Students decorate floats for the parade. Teachers decorate hallways and classrooms. Alumni return to campus, and families make plans to be part of the experience.

The excitement extends well beyond the football field. School spirit becomes something shared by students, teachers, families, alumni, and the entire community.

For many, “The Game” is an opportunity to reconnect with old friends, celebrate their school, and participate in a tradition that has brought generations together.

For our players, it means something more.

They are the current stewards of a tradition that existed long before they arrived and will continue long after they graduate.

Their opportunity to contribute to that legacy is fleeting. Generations of players before them have built and preserved this tradition, and now they have entrusted it to this team. In time, our players will pass that same responsibility to those who follow. What they do with their opportunity is up to them. Their responsibility is not simply to inherit the legacy, but to advance it, strengthen it, and preserve it for the generations yet to come.

When they put on their uniforms, they represent more than themselves. They represent their teammates, their coaches, their school, and the generations of players who wore those same colors before them. They represent the families and community members who take pride in what St. Johnsbury Academy stands for.

That’s a responsibility worth understanding.

In a small community, traditions like “The Game” have a way of bringing people together. They provide a common identity, a sense of belonging, and an opportunity to be part of something larger than ourselves.

When we take the field on Saturday, we carry more than a game plan. We carry the pride of our school, the support of our families, the memories of our alumni, and the expectations of our community.

That is what makes rivalry games so special.

They remind us that football is not simply a game played by a team. It is an experience shared by an entire community.

And when the stands fill, the crowd roars, and the opening whistle blows, our players have an opportunity to do more than win a football game.

They have an opportunity to give their community something worth remembering.

Coach Rich Alercio is available to discuss coaching philosophy, X’s & O’s, or teach his O-Line “techniques in the trenches.” Contact Coach at richalercio@gmail.com and share http://www.olineskills.com with your colleagues and friends. Thanks for supporting this blog and joining our conversations, and as always, thanks for your time!

We are past the halfway point of the football season, making this a perfect time to take an honest look at what we are doing—and how well it is working.

One lesson I have learned over a long coaching career is that the plays I think are good aren’t always the plays that produce the best results.

As coaches, we can become attached to certain plays because they look good on paper, have worked in the past, or simply because we believe in them.

But football doesn’t care what we think should work.

The numbers don’t lie.

This is especially important on third and fourth downs—what we call the “Money Downs.”

These are the downs that keep drives alive, create scoring opportunities, and often determine the outcome of a game.

We need to know which plays consistently give us the best chance to convert—and which ones don’t.

The film tells us why something happened. The statistics tell us how often it happens.

We need both.

The purpose of an honest audit isn’t to prove that a play we like is good. It’s to discover what actually gives our players the best chance to succeed.

At this point in the season, it’s time to challenge our assumptions, eliminate what isn’t working, and lean into what we do best.

The Money Downs demand our best preparation, our best decisions, and our best execution.

Because when the game is on the line, what works matters a whole lot more than what we wish would work.

Coach Rich Alercio is available to discuss coaching philosophy, X’s & O’s, or teach his O-Line “techniques in the trenches.” Contact Coach at richalercio@gmail.com and share http://www.olineskills.com with your colleagues and friends. Thanks for supporting this blog and joining our conversations, and as always, thanks for your time! 

Big Green turns Big Pink on Thursday, October 8!

For the first time in a while, we will play a rare Thursday night game under the lights at Fairbanks Field—and this one will be about much more than football.

Our October 8 game will be a Pink Out fundraiser benefiting NEKCAN—the Northeast Kingdom Cancer Action Network.

Founded in 2022, NEKCAN is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to raising funds and providing direct grant assistance to Northeast Kingdom families battling cancer. Since its founding, NEKCAN has distributed more than $250,000 in grants to our neighbors throughout the NEK, including more than $96,000 in 2025 alone.

The fundraiser is also the senior capstone project of one of our team captains, which makes the night especially meaningful to our football family. We talk a lot about developing young men who understand that being part of a team—and being part of a community—comes with a responsibility to serve something larger than themselves. This is a great example of one of our players doing exactly that.

And our community has responded.

One SJA family donated all of the jerseys for the event. Another family, whose business is a local screen-printing company, is donating the time and materials to personalize every jersey with pink names and numbers.

That’s what makes this night special.

It isn’t just a football game.

It’s a player taking the initiative to help others. It’s families stepping forward to support him. It’s teammates, parents, coaches, and community members coming together to help people in our own backyard who are fighting cancer.

That’s what a football community can be.

So come out to Fairbanks Field on Thursday, October 8.

Wear pink. Support our Hilltoppers. Support NEKCAN. Support your neighbors.

Let’s turn Big Green into Big Pink and show what the Hilltopper football family is all about.

Coach Rich Alercio is available to discuss coaching philosophy, X’s & O’s, or teach his O-Line “techniques in the trenches.” Contact Coach at richalercio@gmail.com and share http://www.olineskills.com with your colleagues and friends. Thanks for supporting this blog and joining our conversations, and as always, thanks for your time! 

Former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse recently wrote a Wall Street Journal article entitled America Needs Its Boys to Play Football. In it, he makes the case that young men need opportunities to develop strength, ambition, perseverance, self-mastery, and community—and that football, when done right, can help provide them.

There is a tendency in our culture to talk about masculinity through the lens of what can go wrong. Certainly, young men need to understand that strength without character, power without self-control, and aggression without purpose can become destructive.

But the answer to destructive masculinity isn’t to convince young men that strength itself is the problem. It is to teach them what strength is for.

A strong man doesn’t need to prove his strength in every situation. He knows when to compete and when to walk away. He knows when to speak and when to listen. He knows when to lead and when to follow.

He understands that protecting someone is different from controlling them. He understands that having power creates responsibility. He knows that discipline is not weakness and that real confidence doesn’t require constant validation.

And he understands that the strongest person in the room is often the person with the greatest ability to control himself.

That is what football can teach when it is done right.

Football gives young men a place to compete. It allows them to test themselves physically and mentally. It teaches them to push through discomfort, control their emotions, accept coaching, sacrifice for teammates, and keep working when things aren’t going their way. It gives all that energy, ambition, competitiveness, and strength somewhere productive to go.

We don’t need to take strength away from young men. We need to give their strength direction.

Young men need to learn how to be strong—not ashamed of their strength, afraid of their ambition, or apologetic for their competitiveness, energy, or desire to become better.

They need to learn what strength is for.

Coach Rich Alercio is available to discuss coaching philosophy, X’s & O’s, or teach his O-Line “techniques in the trenches.” Contact Coach at richalercio@gmail.com and share http://www.olineskills.com with your colleagues and friends. Thanks for supporting this blog and joining our conversations, and as always, thanks for your time! 

“If it’s important to them, it needs to be important to you.”

I’ve tried to live by that philosophy with my family and with my employer. This weekend, I was reminded that it applies to my team as well.

Friday night’s win turned out to be a milestone victory for me—my 95th win as head coach at St. Johnsbury Academy, making me the winningest football coach in school history.

It wasn’t a milestone I had been keeping track of.

Our players had.

As we broke the post-game huddle, one of our captains began to turn the focus toward the milestone. Recognizing where he was going, I tried to put a quick end to it.

I told them to keep the focus where it belonged: on what they had just accomplished.

We had gone on the road and beaten a tough, well-coached team that had beaten us a year earlier in the state championship game. That was the accomplishment I wanted them to celebrate.

Then I looked at their faces.

They were disappointed.

Our captain looked at me and said, “But Coach, we got you a present.”

In that moment, I realized something.

I had decided what should be important. They were trying to tell me what was important to them.

So, I made it important to me.

I conceded to their request, and they presented me with their gift—a big, cold chain with a medal and a photo of me on it.

We celebrated together, then boarded the bus for the long ride home.

The gift itself will always mean something to me. But what means even more is why they gave it to me.

They were proud of what they had accomplished, but they also wanted to recognize someone they felt had been part of their journey. They wanted to celebrate something that mattered to them.

As coaches, we spend a lot of time teaching our players what we think is important. We establish standards. We teach discipline, toughness, accountability, teamwork, and the countless details required to play the game the right way.

But coaching is also about understanding your players.

Sometimes, they remind us that the things we think are important aren’t always the things they think are important. And sometimes, the best thing a coach can do is stop, listen, and let the players have their moment.

That cold chain and medal will eventually find their way into a box somewhere with other keepsakes from a long career. But the memory of those players standing there saying, “But Coach, we got you a present,” will stay with me forever.

If it’s important to them, it needs to be important to you.

Sometimes, our players teach us as much as we teach them.

Coach Rich Alercio is available to discuss coaching philosophy, X’s & O’s, or teach his O-Line “techniques in the trenches.” Contact Coach at richalercio@gmail.com and share http://www.olineskills.com with your colleagues and friends. Thanks for supporting this blog and joining our conversations, and as always, thanks for your time! 

One of our coaches recently shared an idea from Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz. In On War, Clausewitz described what he called a “remarkable trinity”—three different forces that interact to shape the character and conduct of war: the people, the military, and the government.

High school football is certainly not war, but the concept translates surprisingly well.

As coaches, we spend a tremendous amount of time preparing our football team. We develop schemes, teach fundamentals, watch film, lift weights, practice, correct mistakes, and prepare our players for Friday night. But the more I thought about Clausewitz’s trinity, the more I realized something important:

A football team can only be as strong as the community that supports it.

At St. Johnsbury Academy, our own remarkable trinity is our players and coaches, our school and administration, and our parents, alumni, and community. Each has a different responsibility. But when all three are pulling in the same direction, the results can be pretty special.

One of the common threads among successful high school football programs in Vermont isn’t simply talent. It isn’t simply coaching. It is the environment surrounding the program.

Successful programs have communities that believe in them. They have parents who support them. They have administrations that understand their value. They have alumni who remain connected. And they have players who take pride in wearing the uniform.

At St. Johnsbury Academy, we talk often about our football family. That phrase isn’t simply a slogan. A family works because everyone understands that they have a role.

Coaches coach. Players play. Parents support. Teachers educate. Administrators provide leadership and resources. Alumni stay connected. The community believes.

None of those roles replaces another, and none succeeds entirely on its own.

We can build the best game plan in the state, but we still need players willing to execute it. Talented players still need coaches willing to teach them, challenge them, and demand more from them. Great players and coaches still need a school willing to support the program. And even with all of those things in place, there is something different about playing on Friday night in front of a community that genuinely cares about Hilltopper Football.

That’s our remarkable trinity.

The strength of the team.
The support of the school.
The commitment of our families and community.

Three different parts, each with a different role. But when all three believe in one another, support one another, and pull in the same direction, they become something much stronger than any one of them could be alone.

That’s what it means to be a football family.

Coach Rich Alercio is available to discuss coaching philosophy, X’s & O’s, or teach his O-Line “techniques in the trenches.” Contact Coach at richalercio@gmail.com and share http://www.olineskills.com with your colleagues and friends. Thanks for supporting this blog and joining our conversations, and as always, thanks for your time! 

Every team begins the season undefeated.

After Week 1, only half of those teams remain undefeated. But whether you won or lost, the most important thing is that Week 1 is over.

A high school football season is a lot like playing the front nine at your local golf course. Each week is a different hole, presenting a different challenge. Some are short par 3s, where a lack of focus can quickly put you in trouble. Others are long, demanding par 4s that require precision and execution. And some are par 5s that require patience, discipline, and the ability to put multiple parts of your game together.

The beauty of golf is that no matter what happened on the first hole, the next tee gives you a fresh opportunity. You may have birdied the first or made double bogey, but when you step onto the second tee box, Hole #1 is behind you. The score is already on the card.

Football is the same way.

Put Hole #1 behind you.

We were fortunate enough to birdie the first hole. We earned a win, but that score is now on the card. We can’t change it, and we can’t play it again. More importantly, it doesn’t give us a single stroke on the next hole.

Now our attention turns to Hole #2.

A new opponent. A new challenge. A new game.

We will prepare for it mentally and physically, embrace the challenge, and then go play it the right way.

Coach Rich Alercio is available to discuss coaching philosophy, X’s & O’s, or teach his O-Line “techniques in the trenches.” Contact Coach at richalercio@gmail.com and share http://www.olineskills.com with your colleagues and friends. Thanks for supporting this blog and joining our conversations, and as always, thanks for your time! 

A great school is more than classrooms and buildings. It is a community, and athletics provides some of the best opportunities for that community to come together.

Schools can sometimes feel divided by grades, dorms, teams, activities, and interests. Students have different friend groups. Faculty work in different departments. Families have different schedules. Everyone has their own world.

But Friday night football under the lights has a way of bringing those worlds together.

The first football game of the season gives students from different backgrounds a common experience. It gives teachers an opportunity to see their students in a different environment. It gives alumni a reason to return and reconnect. It gives families a chance to share in the energy and traditions of the school. And it gives everyone an opportunity to be part of something larger than themselves.

For one night, the lights come on, the stands fill, the music plays, the cheerleaders cheer, and the team takes the field. Students, teachers, families, and alumni may arrive for different reasons, but for a few hours, they are all part of the same community.

That is one of the great things about high school athletics. The scoreboard will tell us who won the game, but some of what happens on a Friday night is more important than the final score.

We show up. We cheer together. We represent our school together.

And in doing so, we remind one another: You are part of this. You belong here.

Coach Rich Alercio is available to discuss coaching philosophy, X’s & O’s, or teach his O-Line “techniques in the trenches.” Contact Coach at richalercio@gmail.com and share http://www.olineskills.com with your colleagues and friends. Thanks for supporting this blog and joining our conversations, and as always, thanks for your time! 

“On the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that, on other days, on other fields, will bear the fruits of victory.” — General Douglas MacArthur

There may be no better description of the value of a preseason football scrimmage.

A scrimmage is not a championship game. There is no trophy awarded at the end of the day. The score, if there even is one, will not appear in the standings. Weeks from now, no one will remember who “won” the scrimmage.

And that is precisely the point.

The purpose of a preseason scrimmage is not to prove what we are. It is to discover what we need to become.

For the first time, players have an opportunity to test themselves against someone wearing a different uniform. Coaches get to see how their team responds when the opponent doesn’t know the script, doesn’t run the defense we practiced against, and is trying to win every rep.

That is where the seeds are sown.

The opponent in a preseason scrimmage is not the enemy. In many ways, they are helping us prepare for the battles ahead. They provide something our own scout team cannot completely replicate: unfamiliarity, uncertainty, and genuine competition.

They force us to react rather than simply rehearse.

That is the meaning of friendly strife.

We compete. We play hard. We challenge one another physically and mentally. But when the day is over, both teams should leave better than when they arrived.

The scrimmage gives us something every team needs before the season begins: an honest assessment of where we are.

Did we tackle?

Did we communicate?

Did we align correctly and make the right reads?

Did we play with discipline?

Did we handle adversity?

Did we finish plays?

Did we play with the energy, effort, and enthusiasm our program demands?

Those are the questions that matter.

The video from a preseason scrimmage can be one of the most valuable teaching tools of the season because it gives us a truthful picture of where we are—not where we hope to be.

Every rep is information. Every mistake is an opportunity to learn. Every correction is a chance to improve. Every difficult moment is an opportunity to grow.

But identifying the lesson is not enough.

On the fields of friendly strife, we sow the seeds. What we do next determines whether they ever bear fruit.

Our job is to return to work. Make the corrections. Fix the technique. Improve the communication. Raise the standard. Get better every day.

Coach Rich Alercio is available to discuss coaching philosophy, X’s & O’s, or teach his O-Line “techniques in the trenches.” Contact Coach at richalercio@gmail.com and share http://www.olineskills.com with your colleagues and friends. Thanks for supporting this blog and joining our conversations, and as always, thanks for your time! 

At a recent professional development clinic, I shared with a group of coaches—and later with our players—that playing football, and coaching any sport, is a Sisyphean task. The nature of sport is that the work is never finished.

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus, the King of Corinth, was condemned by Zeus to an eternal punishment: pushing a massive boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down and begin again. Like Sisyphus, athletes and coaches continually push toward something they can never permanently achieve. There is always another practice, another opponent, another season. Even after a great victory, the next day comes, and we are back to pushing the rock again.

But the value isn’t in finally reaching the top of the hill. It is in becoming stronger while pushing the stone.

The Sisyphean task isn’t meaningless because it repeats. It is meaningful because we choose to keep pushing. We show up, do the work, pursue improvement, and then come back and do it again.

The ball will be kicked off again. The whistle will blow again. The rock and the hill will be waiting.

So we push the rock.

Again.

Coach Rich Alercio is available to discuss coaching philosophy, X’s & O’s, or teach his O-Line “techniques in the trenches.” Contact Coach at richalercio@gmail.com and share http://www.olineskills.com with your colleagues and friends. Thanks for supporting this blog and joining our conversations, and as always, thanks for your time!