Month: May 2023

This weekend marks the “Memorial Day Holiday,” where we remember those who have given their lives in sacrifice for the freedoms we all enjoy. Veteran’s Day (Nov 11) is intended to honor all veterans, but Memorial Day is focused on those who gave the ultimate sacrifice. As you gather with family and friends, light the barbeque, and begin the summer season, please recall those who made it possible.

In 2022, Buzz Bissenger, (Author of “Friday Night Lights,” a book, movie, and TV show, familiar to many football fans) wrote a book called “The Mosquito Bowl,” about a group of college all-star football players who all ended up in a semi-organized football game on the island of Guadalcanal on Dec 24, 1944. Though merely 8 months from the end of the War, they also faced a seeming lifetime of trials and tribulations.

Some of the players included:

— George Murphy, team captain at Notre Dame and the son of a clerk in South Bend, Indiana.

— Tony Butkovich, an All-American at Purdue and one of seven sons of a Croatian coal miner in central Illinois.

— Robert Bauman, a tackle and punter at Wisconsin. As a kid he had gone to work in the onion fields near his hometown south of Chicago after his father died.

— David Schreiner, an All-American end at Wisconsin whose German immigrant grandfather had established a prosperous family in Lancaster.

All were in their 20s when they played in the Mosquito Bowl and ultimately fought in the battle of Okinawa. Their World War II experience changed them just as it would hundreds of thousands of other Americans, their families, and friends.

I wouldn’t expect readers to know the names of these men or the countless other young football players who like them who found themselves fighting and in some cases dying for the freedoms we enjoy today.

However, in reading about them, I also recognize commonalities among the hundreds, perhaps even thousands of players I’ve played with and coached in the last four decades. While the names might be different, the character attributes are the same: selfless, dedicated, dependable, trustworthy, team-oriented… all had seemingly unlimited potential to be husbands, fathers, role models, and mentors. Men of integrity who would have led their community, and led others to greatness. Each name and circumstance could easily be from the hometown or city most familiar to the reader, and it’s exactly this “everyman” characteristic that makes the story so compelling.

While I am saddened by their lives cut short, I am bolstered by their ability to translate both the physical and moral elements of football to become players worthy of mention in Bissinger’s novel. I hope none of our student-athletes find themselves in a circumstance where such a sacrifice would be called for. Yet at the same time, I find myself drawn to the character, integrity, and courage underpinning each of those described in Bissinger’s book.

In the Bible, John, Chapter 15, verse 13 says, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” I salute the men and women who have sacrificed to ensure we have the opportunity to both recognize and honor them by emulating their honor, courage, and commitment. Those we honor this weekend; are the teammates we someday hope to be worthy of. Those we honor years from now are likely young men and women cut from the same cloth. Shaped by family, teammates, teachers, and coaches… We should be so lucky to turn over the responsibility of our society to leaders like those Bissinger describes in his book, and we’re blessed to work with student-athletes like that 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! 

Tomorrow (May 19^th), we’ll hold a team meeting in the campus chapel to kick off the planning and set expectations for the summer training. As we’ve discussed through the evolution of this blog, I believe our culture is an essential and foundational component of both our team and our success.

Hilltopper culture establishes a set of common practices, approaches, and behaviors guiding the team on and off the field. With more than three decades of coaching experience, I’m confident getting the culture right is more important than any offense, defense, or special teams philosophy we may want to employ.

The Team comes first. Individually, we all must commit to putting the interests of the team ahead of our own, and we reinforce those concepts in many ways. Tomorrow, we’ll reinforce elements of attitude and aptitude. I’ll project a 2×2 matrix with “Can & Can’t” on one axis, and “Will & Won’t” on the other.

These axes set up four quadrants and provide visual cues to attitude and aptitude. Coaches work with student-athletes and each needs to know where they fall on this graphic. Obviously, we want teammates and staff in the “Can & Will” quadrant, and not in the “Can’t & Won’t.” The “Can’t but Will” quadrant is ripe for teaching and coaching. The “Can but Won’t” quadrant often requires more assessment and a conscious decision to motivate or in some circumstances recommend an alternative team…

The operative question is to pose the four quadrants and ask each teammate and staff member, “Where are you today?” While considering “where they are…” most will also recognize “where they should be.”

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! 

I am delighted to share that Quinn Murphy has become the 6th Hilltopper in as many seasons to be inducted into the Vermont Chapter of the National Football Foundation Hall of Fame as a scholar-athlete.  This past season, Quinn scored 42 of our team’s 45 touchdowns and accounted for 93% of our total offense on the ground and through the air while excelling in the classroom.  He joins Collin Urie – in 2017, Jasper Rankin – in 2018, Renwick Smith – in 2019 (also named to the National Team of Distinction), Trey Alercio – in 2020, and Sam Begin – in 2022.  (There were no inductees in 2021 due to the COVID pandemic.)  

The Foundation also honored two other Hilltoppers during that timespan.  Shane Alercio was named the Most Courageous Athlete in 2018 after battling a rare vestibular disorder during his senior season while leading us to a state championship.  In 2019, Jake Cady received the Community Service Award for helping raise over $40,000 to help support families battling cancer through his non-profit called Team Sullycat.

We are immensely proud of the successes of our student-athletes on the field, in the community, and in the classroom.  We trust the examples of excellence in those who have been honored will inspire future Hilltoppers to strive for excellence, overcome adversity, and put others’ interests above themselves. 

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 year during the time of the NFL Draft, we have a staff exercise where each coach is sent an alphabetical list of our returning players and asked to return the list with each player in the order they would draft them.  In draft terms, each coach is asked to create their own “Best Available” list.  

Then we put all the drafts in a shared drive so that we can see how each coach’s list compares to the others and mine.  If I have done a good job in communicating the shared vision of our team, the lists should not be all that different.  Then we combine all the lists to have a final staff draft list of our team.  This is the first step in seeing that we put the “Best 11” on the field going into summer workouts.

When Anthony Richardson, the QB from Florida, was drafted, he stated that God blessed him with abilities.  I can only assume he was referencing his physical abilities which are unparalleled at the position. But when I draft our team, I focus on other abilities first: coachability, accountability, reliability, and dependability.  In high school football, the 5’8″ 175lbs player who is “All In”, is of greater value to his team than the more talented 6’2″ 225lbs player whose commitment to the team is lukewarm at best.  According to my son, who was an athletic trainer this past season with the Gators, Anthony checks all of those ability boxes as well.

Lastly, our coaches should know to make evidence-based decisions in creating their lists.  They should list players based on the behaviors they have witnessed from the player on the field, in the weight room, in the classroom, and in our community.   They should not base their evaluation on what they think, feel, or believe.  This is where the Anthony Richardson pick is interesting.  As Tim Hasselbeck stated at the draft, “there is very little evidence that Richardson can play the position at a high level.”  Yet he was the number 4 pick.

How would you draft your team?  Who are your most valuable players and how do you measure that value?

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!