Thanks to the Internet, it didn?t take long for the 30 to 40 Scottsdale Christian Academy football players to get familiar with their head coach?s top two assistants.
A click or two away, they could find out that offensive line coach Dale Hellestrae played on three Super Bowl teams with the Dallas Cowboys as a long snapper and backup offensive lineman, and that defensive coordinator Ron Pritchard played nine seasons in the NFL with the Houston Oilers and the Cincinnati Bengals and was a star linebacker in the late 1960s under Frank Kush at Arizona State and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
Those credentials alone have the attention of high school athletes trying to find their way on the football field, as Kevin Allen takes over the program, bringing in two assistants with NFL playing backgrounds.
?I think it gives you some credibility when you first talk to them,? said Hellestrae, 51, a Saguaro High alum who played collegiately at Southern Methodist. ?For both of us, they look at you and they trust what you?re going to do football- wise.?
Pritchard spent the past three seasons helping out Allen at Chandler Valley Christian. Hellestrae, who had two daughters play sports at Scottsdale Christian, has been helping out SCA?s program before Allen came in.
Coaching works into Hellestrae?s schedule during the week, because he does color commentary on weekends for TV football games, from high school to college to pro. He currently does the color commentary for Cox7 on Rattlers home games.
Pritchard is a former school administrator, who served as athletic director at Gilbert Christian, formerly Surrey Garden.
Allen met 35 players in spring football. It?s now up to 43. Eighteen players graduated from last year?s 9-2 team. So it?s important to get a young team motivated off the bat. That?s where Hellestrae and Pritchard come in.
?I?m fortunate for me as a head coach to have Dale and Ron with their experience in football,? said Allen, who played high school football in New Mexico and never reached the pro level. ?It doesn?t get any better. The teaching that takes place even for our little school, it?s huge for us. We?re so fortunate and blessed to have that. When you add the things about concussions, academics, playing at the next level, we have a great environment of teaching here. This is the best situation I?ve been in as a head coach.?
Both Pritchard and Hellestrae came from a playing era when concussion wasn?t a big topic of discussion ? ?If they said two and you put up four fingers, that was?in the neighborhood,? Pritchard said).
But they know it?s something that has to be addressed among young athletes. They know how compromise needs to come into play at a small school when you?re dealing with fewer players than at the big, public schools, and if a star player?s family decides to go on a 10-day, out-of-state vacation in October, you have to learn to accept it.
?When you have a smaller population, you have to manage your players differently,? Pritchard said. ?You don?t have the depth level. It?s not like the old days of Frank Kush, where if you go down, he says, ?Just move him aside, put in someone else.? I think Kevin would agree, you have to be conscious of how you?re managing the kids emotionally and physically. You?re not just reloading.
?You have to manage people. You have 40 different personalities. It takes time to do that. ? You want to start winning their souls, their minds, to get them to trust you. Coach Allen does a great job with that. Then you can show them how to win, not just on the scoreboard, but win in life, too.?
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