Dear Parents and Players of Wilmette Catholic Junior Varsity Football:
I hope everyone is having an enjoyable summer. The 2008 football season is just around the corner. Our first week of practice will be Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, the 13th, 14th and 15th of August. Practice times for these first 3 days is from 5:00 - 6:30PM as we try to beat the heat. Also, these practices will be with just helmets, shorts and cleats, we'll start full pads on Monday, August, 18th. We'll have 4 practices the week of Aug. 18th and 4 the week of Aug. 25th., times will announced later. Our first game will be the weekend of Sept. 5-6, the schedules are not out yet so I will get that info out asap. Be sure to bring a water-bottle - BIG and filled with cold water - with your son's name written on it!
I will be the WCF JV head coach and Coach Gary Delaney - who has a son, Billy, going into 1st grade at St. Joseph School - will be heading up our defense. Gary and I both work from home. My wife - who also works from home - and I have three sons - Frederick (14), Thomas (11) and Andrew (6) - who were all at St. Joseph School last year. I have coached organized baseball in Evanston (EBYSA) - 7 years - and basketball at St. Joes - 3 years. Gary, who will begin serving on the school board at St. Joseph this year, played four years as a middle linebacker for Illinois State University. I had a brief "cup of coffee" as QB "walk on" over at Northwestern University in the 1970's. We might be getting some part-time help from Andy Kohl - a Loyola Academy alum with a son at St. Joes - who used to be a head coach at the high school level. I would like one or more assistant coach(s) and/or a person - preferably from the St. Francis community - to keep stats during games, for example, down and distance, starting position etc. Anyone interested in volunteering or being involved in any way, please let me know. Also, we're going to need a "Team Mom" - someone who can help us with communication, schedules, carpooling, etc.
My coaching style focuses on having fun while building positive energy and enthusiasm. We are trying to unify behind the great success of WCF's 2007 season - where they finished FIRST in our league - so a lot of the nuts and bolts - including the general playbook and pattern of our practices - will be coming from our pioneering WCF Varsity Coaches, led by Head Coach Rob Sernus and Coach John Tasiopoulos. Gary and I met with Rob Sernus at our home last night and we are all looking forward to working together to continue building a very strong foundation for WCF's future.
As Rob noted in his email to the Varsity players/parents, "everybody on our roster will play, there will be no one on our team who will watch the entire season from the bench. Winning is important, and we will try to win every game, but so is the maturation and development of our kids. We will teach the players the fundamentals of blocking and tackling, footwork, hand placement and positioning for lineman, and the team concept of offense, defense and special teams. ALL starting positions are available to the players who earn it, it doesn't matter who played where last year, this is a new season and everything is open."
Rob continued:
"PLAYERS......We will be looking for speed and quickness at the skill positions, so if you want to play quarterback, running back, wing back, receiver, safety etc., you will need to be fast and I encourage EVERYONE to be in shape. We will start the process of determining positions at the very first practice."
Please note that WCF at the 5th and 6th grade level will follow the "equal time" requirement in our coaching-administrative guidelines - ie. over the course of the season, unless your child wants to have a break or sit out, we will make every attempt to give every child the same playing time on the field. The amount of playing time may not be the same each game, but we will try our best to even things out during the course of the entire season.
Finally, I - like Rob - like to keep open line of communication with the parents and players. Towards that end, we've created a WCF Blog and WCF Youtube Video Channel which we will use to create, build, share and celebrate the energy and excitement of Wilmette Catholic Football. If you have a digital video-camera and would like to help us create content for this effort, please feel free to share any thoughts or comments. We are all in this together. Let's have a great year.
Peace and God Bless,
Fred Smart
fksmart@gmail.com
847-878-8090 cell
P.S. Please let me know if there is someone not on the list that should be.
PSS. We will be migrating the WCF Varsity email communication to this wilmettecatholicfootball@gmail.com
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