Friday Nights
Building a High School Football Program
By Tony DeFazio

By game time, more than 15,000 fans had emptied into Rafliff Stadium, where a full moon sweetened the languid desert night, turning the sky an incandescent blue. On one side were the Odessa High fans, dressed in red, ready for this to be the year the jinx was finally broken…On the other side were the Permian fans, dressed in black, arms folded… The game began. The kick off fluttered in the warm air amid shrieks and screams.-H.B. Bissinger's "Friday Night Lights"

H.G. Bissinger's 1990 masterpiece chronicles a season in the life of Odessa, Texas, focusing on its football team, the Permian Panthers, and showing how the town's single-minded devotion to the high school football team shaped the entire community, not just the teenagers who wore the uniforms.

While most of the country can't begin to approximate Odessa's devotion to high school football, one pocket of the nation that understands is western Pennsylvania. High school football has long been an institution in communities from Jeannette to Aliquippa and Mount Lebanon to McKeesport; traditions as rich as anywhere in the nation, and pride at least as full.

"I remember in sixth grade, seeing the band playing while the team walked the path down to the field. I still remember those guys' names," says Hempfield coach Greg Meisner, who grew up watching and then playing for Valley High School before going on to be a star defensive lineman at Pitt and in the NFL.

"You go to a Penn Hills game or a Jeannette game and you see six and seven year old kids wearing Penn Hills hats and Jeannette shirts and all they want to do is reach out and touch one of those players," Meisner continues. "That's what you want. Pack the stadium on Friday nights."

Meisner is in his second year at Hempfield, and his goal is to turn the Spartans into one of the western PA powerhouses he recalls so vividly. Hempfield has struggled in recent years - the Spartans have not made the WPIAL playoffs in almost a decade, and they've not had any kind of consistent success since Bill Abraham left 20 years ago.

What Meisner hopes to accomplish is what Jim Render has at Upper St. Clair and Jack McCurry has at North Hills, what Pete Antimarino started and Terry Smith has continued at Gateway, what Bob Palko is building at West Allegheny. The list of great coaches and great high school programs is easy to rattle off. Don Yanessa, Neil Gordon, Jim Rankin, Art Walker. What's not so easy is getting on that list.

BUILDING A PROGRAM

"It's important to have kids who want to have a strong program. Once you start that tradition it seems to build on itself," says Jack McCurry, who will enter his 30th season as head coach at North Hills, and has won more than 230 games, including three WPIAL titles and one state championship.

Most coaches seem to agree that it all starts with the kids. More specifically, kids who are on the same page as the coaches and understand they are part of something larger than a particular team.

"We try to make the kids aware that they're part of something. It's more than just the three years they're here; they're part of something larger than that," says McCurry, who almost always uses the word program rather than team. "Fifteen years ago there were kids sitting exactly where they are, doing the same things and having success. They want to maintain that."

Bob Palko presides over a West Allegheny program that has won four WPIAL titles and a state championship. West A's players are used to winning because they have done a lot of it-at a high clip-for the past decade. Yet Palko says wins and losses are not part of his curriculum.

"I think the key is how you manage people and how you manage kids," he said. "Do the kids know that you really care about them as a person before a player? I try to help a young kid mature and turn into an adult. The football is very minute…You only have a certain number of hours to teach them football, but you have much more time to help them make the decisions that can turn them into responsible young adults. I really think that winning is just a by-product of that whole process."

While that may sound like politically correct coach-speak to some, Gateway head coach Terry Smith agrees.

"The number one thing we did here was try to instill an attitude of being successful: winning, playing hard and giving a maximum effort," Smith said. "I didn't make a strong emphasis on wins and losses. It was more about playing hard every play and being consistent. Winning kind of takes care of itself at that point."

Support from the decision-makers is cited by high school coaches as critical to the success of a program. Palko says a good administration can act as a buffer for a head coach by helping to eliminate distractions.

"What are they going to do facility-wise? Are you able to professionally enhance your staff? The things that people don't think about - how will you let the coach deal with college-recruiting, practice times, bussing issues? We're fortunate here because we have bosses and administration that supports us in those areas. And it's not just lip-service."

McCurry is in a somewhat unique position at North Hills, where he functions as the high school's principal as well as the head football coach.

"It's important to get the school system, the administration and the community working together to get the program where you want it to be," McCurry says. "You want teachers and coaches to understand what we're trying to do both in and out of the classroom. It's kind of unique here because I'm in a position where I have some influence on the type of people that we hire not only for the classroom but also outside the classroom."

YOUTH PROGRAMS

Another area that is critical to the success of a high school football program is the youth programs in the area. In some communities, such as McKeesport and Jeannette, youth football is part of the culture. Youth teams go to the high school games on Friday nights, middle school coaches and players participate in camps with the high school teams, and the high school coaches oversee the details of the junior high programs.

It's a relatively simple idea: The middle school teams use the same terminology, huddle and cadence of the high schools. They might run four or five of their offensive plays and one basic defense. So as the players move up through the school system, they already have a background in the coaching system, and things can be advanced quicker. It's like a slowly developing playbook.

Yet many high school coaches are torn on the idea of pre-teens playing a lot of traditional football.

"It's important that a kid stays active by playing something," Smith says. "But you need to let a kid play when he's ready to play, because if he has a bad experience then he'll be done and he won't come back. So when they're young, there's no pressure to play."

Some question whether there is even a correlation between successful high school programs and successful youth leagues. Can you assess whether a seventh or eighth grader will be a good high school football player in four or five years? We've all seen kids come up through youth leagues as All-Stars and dominate simply because they've matured quicker than the others their age. But then those other kids catch up to them.

"I don't put a lot of stock in performance at the lower level," says McCurry, who adds that he does think it is good for younger kids to play football. "What I like to see is them becoming involved in the system, having fun and enjoying it. Then it becomes part of something that they want to do. If a kid wants to do it then he's going to get more out of it."

Palko, for his part, isn't sure.

"Truly and honestly, I don't know," he says, when asked if there is a correlation between youth leagues and success at the high school level. He also wonders if it's necessary to pay so much attention to the youth programs.

"I try to stay involved with the midget program by being available as a resource for them; that's it," he says. "Just teach kids how to block and tackle. Teach kids how to have fun."

UNDER THE LIGHTS

While western Pennsylvania may not be west Texas in regards to high school football, there is little doubt that on Friday nights in the fall, many communities across the region are bathed in the Friday night lights from the local high school football stadium.

"We'll see elementary school kids wearing red and white at the games," McCurry says, "and adults sitting in the same seats for 20 years. It's an event, a community thing; that's where people go. It's more than just the 50 or 60 kids that are playing; it's the community involvement, it's the student involvement, it's the environment that we have here…And most of the people don't have kids in the school. For them, this is the tie to the community - football."

Tony DeFazio is the editor of the Pittsburgh Sports Report. Give him your feedback at tdefazio@psrpt.com.