How new Columbus-area football coaches cope with lack of spring practice due to coronavirus
Andrew Oropeza has quite the job on his hands as the new head football coach at Northside.
Northside has not posted a winning season since 2017. The Patriots finished with a 1-9 record in 2019, winning its final game 38-29 over rival Columbus High. The Patriots posted a 4-6 record in 2018, former coach Dave Nurnberg’s first season.
The Patriots averaged around 20 points per game in 2019 and surrendered an average of nearly 44 points per game.
Oropeza likely won’t get a full offseason before his first regular season with the Patriots kicks off, should it actually start on time. Neither will new Manchester head football coach James Moore.
The novel coronavirus pandemic uprooted the sports world, canceling events ranging from the EURO 2020, a massive European soccer tournament, to spring NCAA sports. Oropeza, Moore and their programs face more uncertainty now that spring practice looks certain to be affected.
“I don’t think we’ve seen anything like this,” Oropeza said over the phone on Tuesday. “We’ve just kind of done the best we can with the situation we’ve been dealt, and I think the main thing is, we’re just trying to stay healthy and be smart.”
Staying in shape
Staying healthy and being smart means athletes cannot exercise in weight rooms or take part in team conditioning.
Oropeza and his coaching staff have encouraged their players to do some running on their own, and put in some agility training when possible. The team utilizes bodyweight workouts during practices, Oropeza said, so those are also on the table.
“The main thing is everybody staying healthy and staying on top of their school work,” Oropeza said.
At Manchester, Moore was “in a groove.”
Moore had already started putting the Blue Devils through his rigorous offseason workout program. He was a strength coach at one of his previous stops, and just recently got his team “used to getting sore.”
The coronavirus outbreak put an end to that, but Moore has brought his own twist to at-home workouts.
Moore had his athletes buy a deck of cards. The number on a card represents the number of reps, while aces and face cards represent 10 and 11 reps, respectively. Hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs represent push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups and bodyweight squats.
“They go through the whole deck,” Moore said. “… They can sit there and go through the deck of cards, they can get 80, 90 reps of different body parts.”
No new plays
No in-person practices mean no installation of new offenses, defenses or special teams.
Moore said he just hired an offensive and defensive coordinator, with a special teams coach still to arrive. Several coaches from Evan Hochstetler’s staff are staying on, but three new coaches are completely new to the area. The possibility remains that spring practices could still take place, but the staff has held meetings via telephone and Facetime to prepare in the event it doesn’t happen.
Right now, Moore and his staff are working through which day to install different aspects of the offensive and defensive playbooks. Once that’s nailed down, they’ll prepare for spring as if it were going to happen.
“It may not, but for us, we need to be prepared so we can get going,” Moore said. “We’ve been talking about different things we want to do that we can’t do in person, so we’ve got to spend more time over the telephone.”
Northside’s staff hasn’t held any formal talks related to COVID-19, but “has several ideas in place,” according to its coach.
All players and coaches from both teams are currently healthy, and none have been affected by COVID-19, according to their coaches.
“We would like, as any new coach coming in, to install what we want to install,” Oropeza said. “If we have to push it back — hope that we do not — I think we’ll be OK.”
