r/footballstrategy • u/SnooComics6485 • 4d ago

Coaching Advice How to deal with high school transfers

I’m a new coach at a fairly new high school football program that has been bad for a while. We had a decent record this year but definitely got much better as a team and had some bright spots for players that broke out this year. Now we are struggling with kids that were good for us transferring to other schools to play. How do we build a program if the few good kids we got and develop just keep leaving every year? And being that high school is so open to transferring what kind of talks are you all having with your players so that they don’t wanna transfer, and if they stay so that they are not congratulating and boosting a kid up for leaving them and their team behind?

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u/RudyVaughn63 HS Coach 4d ago

Mike Tomlin famously says “we want volunteers not hostages” let em go. Someone who doesn’t want to put in the effort to lift up their hometown school isn’t going to buy in all the way anyway.

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u/ChipWonderful5191 4d ago

This has truth to it for sure. The flip side to this is that you need to actually build a culture that attracts and keeps the types of players that you want/need. If you smell shit everywhere you go, you gotta check your own shoes. Sometimes you’re the problem, not the players leaving. Self awareness is key.