Friends football coach Monty Lewis struggles with team’s 0-4 start

For Friends football coach Monty Lewis, the worst start in his 13 seasons has already taken its toll.

Sleep comes in fits. Introspection comes in droves. Everything is questioned. Every decision turned over and over. Every third down replayed in his mind.

“I ain’t dying,” Lewis said Wednesday morning in his office. “But it feels like it sometimes.”

The Falcons limp into Saturday’s homecoming game against Southwestern with an 0-4 record – the school’s worst start since 1999 and pre-dating the Lewis era, which has been the most successful in school history.

“It’s uncharted territory for us,” Lewis said. “This game, it teaches you things. You can’t help but internalize and wonder if you’ve done something, if you’ve made some misstep along the way to lead to this. But I don’t think we have.

“We’re not going to try and change the wheel. We have a proven way of doing things, but I wanted it to be another reloading year and it ended up being a rebuilding year.”

Before Lewis was hired in 2003, Friends had been to the NAIA playoffs once, in 1992, and won the KCAC once, in 1994. Under Lewis, the fifth-winningest active coach in the NAIA, Friends has won three KCAC titles (2006, 2007, 2008) and was in the NAIA playoffs those seasons.

The last two years, Friends has finished in the Top 25 in the NAIA’s final poll – No. 19 in 2013 and No. 21 in 2014. Friends was the KCAC preseason favorite this season in the media poll, picked third in the coaches poll and ranked No. 21 in the NAIA preseason Top 25.

All of which has Lewis even more perplexed.

“There’s a lot more sleepless nights, because you never turn it off during the season,” Lewis said. “A lot of people have reached out through calls, texts and e-mails, and I can sense that cautiousness in their tones, because they know we live it. I know everything with me can seem like a play on words or some cliché at times, but we really do live it. And we want our players to live it.”

Right now, Friends’ biggest problem seems to be its offense. Friends hasn’t scored more than 21 points in a game this season, and is eighth in the KCAC in total offense (253.5 yards) and eight in scoring offense (12.5 points). The struggles have necessitated a switch at quarterback. Sophomore Brett Darling will make his first start against Southwestern taking over for senior Kris Denton, who started the first four games and will move to wide receiver.

Denton threw for 307 yards, eight interceptions and no touchdowns in the first four games.

“Kris had full command of the running game, but struggled passing,” Lewis said. “And that’s Brett’s strength, we think. I’m not somebody that’s ever going to run a two-quarterback system.… I look at our schedule and I think we can win our next seven games. That’s just my mindset. We’re capable.”

Lewis said the losses have forced himself, along with longtime assistant Matt Welch, to re-examine everything – including how they viewed winning.

“For a long time, winning has been more of a relief than anything else … it was just something that was expected,” Lewis said. “We got to the point where we just hated losing more than we enjoyed winning. We forgot what it was like to experience that exhilaration that comes with winning. We want to get that back, get that thrill back that comes with it.”

This story was originally published October 1, 2015 at 2:17 PM with the headline "Friends football coach Monty Lewis struggles with team’s 0-4 start."