Building a contender

Friday, Dec. 18, 2009

Among all the many schools in the state of Maryland only four per year get the honor of doing so.

However, for those four coaches, getting to that stage required a process, a process that the four football coaches of St. Mary's County are currently in as the dream of raising the plaque is alive and well.

Great Mills head coach Bill Griffith, named The Enterprise's All-County coach of the year, is starting to see the his process come together as his team won five games this season, a great improvement from the previous 0-10 seasons each of the past two years.

"It's patience," Griffith said is one of the biggest pieces of the process. "You have to be patient with the entire aspect of the program. You are not going to come in and overnight take a program to the top. It simply takes time."

But patience is not the only key to the state championship puzzle, there are a lot of components that go into building a state championship contender.

In the case of St. Mary's Ryken head coach Bob Harmon he literally is building a program from the ground up as the team just ended its second year as a varsity program.

"Someone wanted to take a team picture and I had to go to Wal-Mart to buy a football," he explained of the first season ever for the Knights four years ago. "… But those kids stuck with us after winning one game that season to winning six at the junior varsity level the year after, and then last year our first varsity year, it was tough."

Ryken finished this past season at 4-6 overall after winning just one game in 2008.

Among the four county coaches, though, one common theme found itself in the formula for building success: support.

"There are a lot of things that make up a state championship team," Chopticon head coach Tony Lisanti said. "First of all, you have to have the support of your community, in your building from the administration and you have to have the support of your parents. That is a big part of it."

"I think, first of all, that you need an administration that is behind you," Harmon added. "I feel here at St. Mary's Ryken from the president to the athletic director to the principal, they want us to be successful. They want all of the sports to do well, but they started football here and they want us to do well."

Even with support from fans and so forth, it ultimately comes down to the players on the field. When players have a chance to grow together, that can help the process of building.

Lisanti understands this fact as a core group of his players were sophomores this past season.

"I really think it helps a lot," Lisanti said of youth. "Every now and then we get classes like that, especially here at Chopticon. These kids, when they get out on the field, they are not playing individually for themselves, they are playing for one another. … You can't put a price on that."

"They learn about each other," Griffith said of players growing together. "They learn where each person will be on the field, they have been together and played together and they know each other's strengths and weaknesses."

However you put it, building a championship contender is no easy job, and can best be explained as a large puzzle.

"It's a long process, and it is not something that can just happen overnight," Pratley said. "It's one of those deals where you start out, and you gradually put each piece in place, and it's almost like you are looking at a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. And you have to work on the four corner pieces [athletes, luck, coaching and support]."

Huntingtown head coach Jerry Franks understands the process of building a state championship team as he took the Hurricanes to the Class 3A state football championship game earlier this month six years after the school opened.

"We had taken the players that we had and worked them extremely hard in the weight room," Franks said as a part of the process after his Hurricanes lost to Linganore in the state title game at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, the site of the state championship games. "… We were hoping that they would build themselves into a state championship team."

"That would be the ultimate payoff," Lisanti said of winning a state title.

jmccray@somdnews.com