How champions, new coaches approached the first Kansas high school football practice
Monday marked the first full practice of the Kansas high school football season with Wichita-area teams already getting the full Kansas weather treatment.
Regardless the level of prestige of the program or its expectations, the first practice of the season always elicits excitement from players.
For defending state champions like Andale and Derby, Monday was about defending the title. For new coaches like Andover’s Ken Dusenbury and Clearwater’s Jimmy McDowell, Monday was about establishing their culture. Varsity Kansas spoke with both ends of the spectrum to find out what Monday was like.
The state champions
There’s not too many problems that arise on Day 1 of practice for programs like Andale or Derby.
They each have had a system in place for a decade-plus with championship expectations on an annual basis. Every player who comes through both of those programs knows what to expect and knows where the bar is set.
“There’s something to be said about being a senior football player for Derby,” head coach Brandon Clark said. “These guys want it bad. Not just for themselves, but for their teammates, for their community and for their school. Everybody takes pride in what they do. They’ve done a great job of working hard, staying humble and doing it for their teammates rather than themselves. When you get it like that, it’s a pretty cool thing to be a part of.”
With 81 kids out for football, which is a program-high for the last five years and likely the most for a Class 3A team, Andale head coach Dylan Schmidt said the pride in the program is as high as it’s ever been coming off back-to-back undefeated seasons ending with 3A championships.
He says Andale’s key comes down to three P’s: people, product and process.
“The people I’m talking about that are so important to our program is our assistant coaches and the support staff and the people in the community,” Schmidt said. “Then the product is the kids and it’s a great product we get to work with. And then the process is such a big deal to us because it’s what you do to take advantage of the time that you get together. I told the kids tonight, ‘Whatever the goal is, you’ve got to decide what you’re willing to sacrifice to get there.’
“When you have a proven model of success that’s worked for years and year and years, then it’s easier to replicate that I think. There’s no doubt it’s an advantage when you get things rolling the way you want them to go.”
Both schools also benefit from their junior football programs, which feeds players into their high school teams with years of experience running a similar offense.
Even though Derby has won three straight Class 6A titles and six of the last eight championships, Clark demands that the team starts with the same fundamentals on Day 1 as he always does.
“We always use this day to get back to the basics,” Clark said. “We’re able to move a little quicker because our kids have that experience in our junior football program and our middle school program. But we focus on just going through our base stuff, implementing our base offense and base defense. Just cleaning everything up before we start to get into any of the game plan stuff.”
The new coaches
Jimmy McDowell has no such luxury in his first season as head coach in Clearwater.
He wasn’t hired for the job until mid-June, which is four months later than when many football coaching hires take place. There was no spring semester for him to get acclimated to a new school and a new team. He’s had to do it on the fly in the latter part of this summer.
“Considering all of that, the first day went fairly smoothly,” McDowell said. “Culture doesn’t happen overnight. The first time we did a breakdown out of a huddle that goes with my (pillars of success), the kids all kind of looked at me crazy. But then today when we did it at practice, they were all about it.”
McDowell, a first-time head coach who has served previously as the offensive coordinator at Eisenhower, Campus and South, has brought over his own phrase to establish the culture he wants — PRIDE 11. It stands for Pride, Relentless, Intensity, Discipline, Enthusiasm and then one team and one heartbeat.
“As we worked our way slowly throughout the summer, I tried to implement that more and more and establish those as the pillars of our program,” McDowell said. “Those are all things that we can control on the practice field, during games and in the weight room. You don’t have to be 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds and run a 4.4 40. Anyone can do those things.”
Entering his second season at Andover, head coach Ken Dusenbury feels a similar way in that he’s still trying to establish the culture he wants in the program.
Although he already has a year under his belt, Dusenbury points out that Andover was undergoing a construction project that disrupted the team and also his first season came during the coronavirus pandemic.
“It was a real challenge because we didn’t get to see our kids as much as we usually would have and then when we did see them, we had to stay five yards away and we had to keep our distance,” Dusenbury said.
Andover has a proud history of success, so Dusenbury said he didn’t need to overhaul the program — but he does have his own way of running things that he’s trying to incorporate.
After a long history of success at Garden Plain, Dusenbury sees the same possibility at Andover. All of the factors are in the place, but it takes time to establish the culture he wants and fully master his system.
Monday was a step closer to accomplishing that for the coaches looking to make that transition.
“We’re pretty comfortable in our routine now,” Dusenbury said. “It’s a process and it’s going to take time, but I like where we’re going. The kids loved being out there again and the coaches loved it too. It felt great to get back out there and get the season started.”
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