Trojans have fun with new way of practicing

FAIRFIELD — The Trojans are due.

The Fairfield High School football team has high hopes for the 2021 season.

Despite one win over the last two seasons, the Trojans have an experienced core of talent that has accumulated a lot of varsity experience as underclassmen. That experience is seen in practice in the way drills run faster and instruction is absorbed quicker.

“You can’t judge progress and positivity by a won-loss record,” head coach Nate Weaton said. "With experience, more time is spent on getting better instead of fixing mistakes. They know what we’re trying to do, and you can’t put a price tag on that.“

There were 14 sophomores last season and six juniors. Those 20 are looking to the future, unconcerned about the past record of the Trojans. Talent abounds so "we can harvest the fruits of their labor, not necessarily us coaches’ labors,“ Weaton said. ”They were dedicated to offseason work.“

Weaton, assistant coaches Terry Allison, Woody Orne, Shawn Dorman, Brian Dunlap and Joe Kruzich have emphasized a positive outlook, which has been easier to do with a different practice schedule than in the past.

“Changing the way we practice has changed a lot of other things for the good,” Weaton said. He has divided sections up in five minutes blocks and that creates a better pace, and the players stay involved.

"We think it keeps it from getting mundane and if you’re going hard during practice, then that’s your conditioning,“ he said.

The mood is certainly fun and festive when a sound system is belting out tunes. The coaches have a theme for the practice music, maybe its 1970s music day or a country and western day for music or a ‘90s pop sort of day.

“We are more relaxed that way because when they get tense, things are not going to progress as well,” Weaton said. “We will even make fun of ourselves, share a work-related experience, or even our own games and practices. We tell them that we did bad at times and use our own mistakes and failures. Do you think we haven’t messed up before? Sure we have, 1 million times.”

Many times an athlete will tell his teammates, “my bad,” over a missed assignment or dropped ball or tackle. Fairfield is changing that reaction every chance it gets, with humor.

“We joke with them, you don’t need to say, ‘my bad,’ we know it’s your bad. We saw it. It was obvious,” Weaton said. “We want them to come back to the huddle with a changed mindset and get better, play better, do better the next time.”

When a mistake is made, coaches don’t want the “bad” thought. “Instead, we want a mindset of ‘I’ll get it next time,’” Weaton said.

Junior Tate Allen, who is playing linebacker and quarterback in practice, said the team is learning to think positive and not dwell on the bad.

"Whatever they see in the older players is what they’re learning. We have to have that positive mindset as leaders,“ Allen said. ”We have been trying to tell everybody that where ever you play, just do your best and you will succeed."

Allen pointed out that there is no reason to fret over a 1-16 record. “We can’t get any lower than that but it is the past. It’s only up from here. So the best way our attitude can be is look up and do our best.”

What other choice is there than to trust the coaches and the process they have plotted for the players? An important step past that trust will be the faith in teammates.

“We do that with each other, we will get better and we’ll win this year,” Allen said.

A certain amount of loyalty develops if one sees dedication in another. Max Weaton, the only all-district player on the Trojans last year, was at every possible workout session.

“The weight room has to be your friend,” he said. “It’s a pride thing, and it has helped my body tremendously. Coach Woody Orne and coach Jeff Jones (who now works at Arkansas State) helped me transform my body faster than I thought I could.”

Weaton said two years of being younger and getting pounded has developed a certain feeling in many of the Trojans and they will use it as fuel for the upcoming season. A grudge can be a powerful motivator as it rocketed Sigourney-Keota to a semifinal in the UNI-Dome after the Cobras were the only 8-1 team to not make the playoffs the previous year.

“We’re going into this year with a grudge against every team we played in the past,” said Weaton who plays wide receiver and defensive end. “Coach likes to emphasize the fact that little things are what wins games.”

The 15-14 loss at Burlington last season showed the Trojans a lot of things, but “they were little things. High snap into the end zone was a little thing, but ended up being points and a big momentum shift,” Max Weaton said. “That will always stick with us so we made it a point not to forget little things like that.”

Nick Kaska said he had a couple bad plays in the Burlington game. It may or may not have cost the game but more important is the maturity of kids to admit their own mistakes.

“We had drives, we put up points, but there was always a missed block, or a catch that was dropped or a tackle not made,” Kaska said.

The maturity makes a difference.

“You can’t bark at teammates because then you’re shifting the blame, and if there’s blame then it has to be the team, not an individual,” Kaska said. “If you put blame on yourself, you can use it to better yourself.

"The Burlington game, I made a high snap that was a safety and it was pretty much the difference between winning and losing that game. In practice, I haven’t made a high snap yet.“

There’s always good things that happen in a game even in a loss. Those are the things the Trojans “have to grab hold of and use to get better,” senior wide receiver and cornerback Evan Haines said. “Focus on the good with our attitude and then physically work on the mistakes we made and correct those.”

These Trojans have been getting some good coaching both mentally and physically.

A positive mindset does wonders and positivity oozes from somebody like Nick Kaska, wanting to take all the blame because he snapped the ball out of the end zone.

“That’s some positivity we can build on when somebody is that mature and he’s taking it upon himself to get better,” coach Weaton said.

Easier to get to a positive mood when a team’s head coach fights off cancer.

“We’ve spent more time together in the offseason, and I almost can’t say it without getting emotional, that these guys really pulled together and it’s a huge difference,” coach Weaton said.

“For anyone that loves football when we’re out here that’s our two hours of sanctuary because it is the greatest game there is.”