On Aug. 19, football players across Washington turned out for the first day of practice. For those teams and players taking the field for the first time since the fall, a state championship has likely already escaped their reach.
The groundwork for winning a state championship does not begin in August. Or even June and July. Hitting the weight room during summer break? That’s not enough.
“If you want to be one of the top five or 10 teams in the state,” Lakes coach Dave Miller said, “you are going throughout the year.”
Football, like basketball and soccer, has become a year-round sport. There is no offseason.
Quarterbacks, receivers and running backs participate in 7-on-7 passing leagues in the spring and summer. Linemen build muscle in weight rooms, pumping iron during the dreary winter and all the way through the season.
Teams spend as many as four weeks having full-pads practices in June and attend camps on college campuses. Some youth league coaches even run the same schemes and use the same terminology as their local high school in an effort to better prepare players.
High school football has turned into an arms race and the weapons are repetition, precision, strength and endurance.
“The whole thing is bigger, stronger, faster,” Bonney Lake coach Chad Barrett said, “and if you’re not doing it, you’re a step behind all the teams that are.”
‘Can’t show up in August’
The year-round attitude toward football has exploded in the past decade. When Barrett, a 1998 graduate of Rogers High School, played for the Rams, the weight room was always open, but never full. And passing leagues were only starting to gain in popularity.
“We did passing league, but not to the extreme it is now. The lifting was not to the extreme it is today,” Barrett said. “That was when you lifted in the offseason and had 10 or 15 guys there and in the summer you might have more because it’s the summer. Nowadays it starts in January and we’re hoping to get 40 to 50 kids. Every kid that’s not in another sport, you want there. And in the summer you want every kid there.”
That’s exactly what the elite teams get, too.
“The good programs don’t have five or 10 or 15 guys in the weight room in the offseason,” Miller said. “They have 60 or 80 or 100. When college recruiters come by, they say Bellevue and Lakes are different than most programs.”
At Prosser, one of the Washington’s premier football programs, first-year coach Benji Sonnichsen reported that of the 107 players in his program, 101 were in the weight room during the summer and every varsity player had at least 26 workouts.
“We really have made football a year-round deal here,” said Sonnichsen, who takes over the reins from former coach Tom Moore. “When practice starts on August 19, we hit the ground running.”
Yet, even at football-frenzied Prosser, which has played in eight championship games and won four state titles since 1991, the offseason regimen has increased in structure and intensity in the past decade. Instead of simply unlocking the doors to the weight room and tossing a few footballs and tackling dummies onto the field every summer morning, players are required to sign up to attend workout sessions. They must complete 30 before the season begins.
“It’s like a class,” Sonnichsen said. “Our offseason approach has really evolved.”
Gig Harbor coach Darren McKay has a similar method. He teaches an athletic performance training class that 94 percent of the Tides football players took last year. They learn about and engage in strength and conditioning drills – call it an advanced physical education class that prepares students to take an exam to be a certified personal trainer.
“We’re big into strength training,” said McKay, who every January tests his players in the 40-yard dash, bench press and other combine-type workouts. “It’s not uncommon for us to have 90 guys on Monday, Wednesday and Friday lifting in the summer.
“You can’t show up in August and go. It doesn’t work that way anymore.”
Learning terminology early
Some programs have expanded their reach into middle school teams and local youth leagues. Coaches of those teams use the same offensive and defensive schemes and terminology as the local high school team.
The Peninsula Youth Football Association in 2007 began placing kids on teams based on which high school they would attend, Gig Harbor or Peninsula. When Gig Harbor junior Austin Seferian-Jenkins turned out for high school football as a freshman, he discovered he didn’t need to learn nearly as much as he expected to.
“Using the same system definitely helped me pick up on things in high school,” he said. “I knew exactly what the coaches were talking about.”
Because players have this knowledge well before the season begins, coaches don’t waste valuable practice time explaining the basics and can go into more advanced training.
It can also give new schools a quick boost. Graham-Kapowsin, which opened in 2005, has been to the playoffs each of the past three seasons. Eagles coach Eric Kurle said he believes the cooperation with the Graham Eagles youth football league – the teams use about half of the high school team’s terminology and are implementing more every season – has played a role.
“With us being a pretty new school and the talent and student populations getting diluted in the school district because there are now three high schools,” he said, “I think the involvement with the youth teams has been a big reason with why we’ve been able to get to the playoffs the last three years.”
‘The kids want to do it’
All of these activities – passing leagues, lifting weights, football practice in June – fall within the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association’s rules. According to the WIAA, from the day after the conclusion of the spring sports season until Aug. 1, teams in all sports can have as many organized practices as they want. How much a team practices, however, is up to each coach.
“It is really school and sport specific,” said John Miller, a WIAA assistant executive director who oversees football. “Some school districts do have limits. But for the most part, how much a team practices in the summer period is driven by what a particular coach is comfortable with.”
Some newcomers – parents and athletes – are shocked by the required commitment.
“Obviously, some people are a little surprised at how much it takes,” Barrett said. “We have expectations that we set for the commitment level required to be a championship program and everybody has bought into that.”
Finding a balance is key. Lakes coach Dave Miller wants his players in the weight room and participating in passing leagues if they’re not in another sport, but he doesn’t want them to get burned out.
“I come from the old school, I want the kids to have a summer,” he said. “If you’re a good team, you’re going to play 12 or 13 or 14 games and the last thing you want is for the kids to get bored of football.”
Success has proven to be an antidote to boredom. The allure of league titles and state championships is enough to keep kids committed well after the season ends.
The numbers – all the athletes in the weight rooms, participating in passing leagues and turning out for practices in June – speak for themselves.
“The kids,” Sonnichsen said, “want to do it.”
Doug Pacey: 253-597-8271
doug.pacey@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/preps
