Photo by Phil DiGrazia
After winning their league, Coach Newman and the Green Mountain Rams are well-positioned to finish the season strong and make a deep run in the postseason.
Today, he is being recognized as the Broncos High School Flag Coach of the Week. The Denver Broncos and CHSAA will continue to honor one flag football coach and one tackle football coach each week throughout the season.
Throughout the season, all Coach of the Week honorees will be recognized on the field during a pregame ceremony at Broncos home games.
How did you become involved with flag football, and how did you become the head coach at Green Mountain?
After I finished playing football, some of my college people started playing a little bit of flag. At first, I thought, it's a way to keep playing football, even though I'm not playing tackle any more. What I realized was that it was not tackle football at all. It's an entirely different game, and I really enjoyed playing it for what it was. Then, I had some kids in my class that said, if I coached, they would keep playing. I went and applied for the position and got selected. After that, it's just been a lot of fun, I really enjoy coaching the girls and it's going great.
How would you describe your coaching style or philosophy?
A lot is built on the book, You Win in the Locker Room First. The idea is that you have to build that culture before you step on the field. I coached girls basketball when I was at Alameda High School and when I was at North High School, and what I realized from those situations was how important it was to create a culture where the girls knew that their positivity was the most important thing. I started off with my number one rule being no negativity. I want to make sure that we have a positive environment, and I want the players to be the focus of the team. A lot of girls really gravitate towards that and really love being a part of it, so that's been my main focus.
With flag football growing more competitive every year, how does that affect your coaching style and strategies? How does it feel to be a part of this growing sport?
It feels great being part of a growing sport. It's exciting to see how much it has grown over these couple years. I just saw a stat saying that this was the 10th most played sport by girls in the country, and I see it just continuing to grow. What I've seen, especially playing in Jeffco, which is such a large conference, is how much talent there really is out there. There's a lot of girls that are very fast. There's a lot of girls that can really throw the ball, so I think that the competition level is just going to continue to increase and get better and better. I think as coaches, we're going to have to continue to develop and advance what we're trying to do. We are going to have to work on our coaching style and our ideas to continue being competitive in the long run.
Congratulations on winning your league, what does that mean to you as a team and as a coach?
We won that first year, then Pomona won last year, and that really stung for a lot of us. We wanted to get it back, and that was our first goal. I think that it's important to have goals throughout the season, and the first one has to always be winning. It gives you that guaranteed spot in the playoffs, and it gives you that chance to know that you got that first accomplishment done. Now we can set our sights on going into the state playoffs.
What were your expectations coming into this year? Have they changed at all as the season has progressed?
My expectations are more about the girls than it is about the end result of the season. My primary focus is for them to always enjoy playing. I always tell the freshmen that my goal is to make you love playing football and being a part of this team so much that you choose us and want to continue with us. That's always going to be my primary goal. I want the girls to continue falling in love with the sport. That's the first step to have a successful season, and as we've continued, my goals have not changed. As long as we are enjoying what we're doing, then we can continue growing and having a strong season. The girls have continued to become more and more focused, and they understand the sense of urgency. The seniors only have a handful of games left, and then we get to dictate how far we go in the playoffs, so that sense of urgency at this point has definitely increased.
You've got a big matchup this weekend against Arvada West. How do prep your team physically and mentally for a matchup like this one?
I like to phrase it as being excited about it. It's an opportunity to look at a great team and see how we measure up. It's a team I always want to have on our schedule because it's a fun game to have. We can't have fear about playing a great team, it has to be an excitement. We have an opportunity to test ourselves and prove what we can do. I think that creates the difference between going in scared and going in and playing it as well as you can. They have a really good quarterback -- she can really sling the ball around. They're going to test our defense, and I think on our end, our wide receivers and quarterback are going to be able to test their defense. It gives both of us a good test before we get into the playoffs.
As you're headed into the final game of the regular season, what do you tell your players to prepare them for the post season?
Honestly, I start off the offseason with having the conversation of no matter what happens, that I'm proud of them. I've loved coaching them. I love each and every one of them, and no matter what ends up happening, we're going to have a final practice. The idea of the final practice is, win or lose, we know, we got one more time that we're going to come together, and no matter what, they know tomorrow's going to be OK. I know that there's a lot of excitement about the season about how we've been able to play, but we also have to look at it and say, we've got some really good teams coming up. Again, it's just exciting to see what we can do and prove how much we've grown since the first couple of games of the season. You can't worry about what happens tomorrow, you can just focus on what's going on one day at a time.
Is there anything we didn't get a chance to highlight or anything you want to shout out?
I'd shout out every one of the girls on my team. It's amazing to get to coach them. It's a very young team. Savannah Plumley is a sophomore quarterback, and she's absolutely killing it out there. We've got Marissa VanGuilder, who's a phenomenal all-state receiver who's been an all-state receiver two years in a row, and now as a junior going for a third. Defensively, we've got a lot of talent, and I think that the people who have really taken on leadership on our defense have been our two captains, Ella Cockrum and Amelia Goyden. They are really taking that leadership on defense to ignite a fire and to fight harder. I couldn't do it without my assistant coaches as well.
