Strawberry Crest football fans should stay patient as the Phillip Prior era begins in Dover this season.
If coaching was simple, every armchair play caller and Monday morning quarterback would do it and do it well.
Taking over a high school program is not easy, no matter which sport you’re thinking of. Doing so at a football program like Strawberry Crest’s, which has had exactly one winning record (6-5 in 2013) through 10 seasons of existence, is probably one of the toughest jobs anyone coaching at that level could ask for. I don’t think anyone who’s led that program would disagree.
So, yeah, Phillip Prior has quite a hill to climb in Dover. Coming aboard so late in the summer definitely won’t make that climb any easier, but that he’s willing to try is commendable.
I’m not trying to bash the program or the school or anything like that here. But with this team more than any other I’ve covered, there’s always a perception from the outside that it never really has a chance. It’s like the team’s always going to lose, no matter what, unless maybe you get a King or a Leto or something on the schedule.
I see it every time we publish a story or game recap for Crest and people on all social media channels leave “same old Chargers” comments every time. The coaches don’t always talk about it and I never expect them to, nor should anyone, but I know they know what’s out there. I can’t remember the last time I talked to one of the Crest football players without them saying something about “proving doubters wrong” because they hear about it more than anyone.
It’s not that I haven’t heard that coming from other kids at other schools. If I had a dollar for every time a kid told me he was motivated by people not believing in him, even though he’s out there getting college offers and has a hudl page getting decent traction on Twitter through the gamut of recruiting bloggers, I’d eat at Bern’s every night until I die. It’s just that with this particular program, that line is always coming from something different — at least in that it’s backed up by evidence you don’t have to try too hard to find. I know they’ve actually heard that a lot and I know exactly where it all came from.
The team’s in a perpetual underdog state because that’s the truth that gets spoken into existence more often than not, no matter how hard coaches have fought back against it and tried to turn the culture around. For all we know, Prior could be just a few years away from having that program where Ron Hawn, Jim Peaden, John Kelly, Gerold Dickens and Todd Donohoe all wanted to take it. Only time will tell. I do believe, though, that a Crest turnaround is more likely to happen when people surrounding the program get more optimistic, or at least more supportive. There’s nowhere to go but up.
I’ve said some terrible things about the Buffalo Bills over the years, and I consider myself a dedicated fan. But hope doesn’t spring eternal in the NFL the same way it can at the high school level. There are always new kids coming into your program and every other program on the schedule. Districts get reshuffled every few years. There’s always a greater chance of your high school team being able to do something positive, whatever that may be, than when you grow up with an NFL team run into the ground over and over again for decades by the same people who can’t be fired or replaced without something incredibly drastic happening. You have a much better chance of being more satisfied (even if it’s just barely) with your high school team in any given season than with most NFL teams you could root for.
And it’s not like you’re griefing millionaires. I know very well how easy it is to get frustrated at football, trust me, but I also see how that affects people at this level. These are people from your town who go to the same schools, eat at the same restaurants, work out in the same gyms and shop at the same stores as you. These kids are friends with your kids and they live their own lives off the field. I was going to write a sentence here about how high school coaches make next to no additional income for all the extra work they put in after school with their teams, but then I remembered it’s not uncommon for them to come out of pocket for things or set up fundraisers to get things of need. In coaching, the deck is stacked against you in ways you don’t worry about when you’re getting paid seven figures a year to go 6-10 and can almost always find work at the same level even after you get fired. “Underpaid and overworked” describes just about any high school coach in any sport in Florida.
Prior and the Chargers need all the SCHS fans out there to be supportive instead of dismissive, as difficult as that old habit may be to break. It’s probably not going to be a leisurely cruise to success, especially in year one, but everyone involved with that program is going to have an easier go of it when they know the community at large is going to be supportive.
