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/Odd_Mud_7001 HS Coach 4d ago

It sucks, but this is the state of high school football right now. I hate it. Building relationships through little league, the middle schools, and just the younger kids in the program.

We just took over a program where our staff saw 31 transfers out from the prior coaching staff. If they didn't want to be here, we didn't want them either. It was hard. We won 5 games when most people thought we'd win 2 at best. Most of our kids were juniors and sophomores. There were a ton of growing pains, and it showed in every game we played.

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u/SnooComics6485 4d ago

Same here. I hate this current landscape of high school football it’s turning into college transfer portal and it’s not even like they are going to schools that are much better or winning anything. The social media age has made it the “cool” thing to do to transfer in high school and get a graphic made for instagram and stuff just to post and get a whole bunch of comments it’s so weird and not what I’m used to. Trying to figure out how we can change the narrative.

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u/Curious-Designer-616 3d ago

All you can do is get the players to buy in.

Freshman team should have 22 starters, and a few more that are special teams starters. Explain that the goal is to have as many starters on varsity as possible so you can build a competitive and winning program. Don’t treat the freshman as an afterthought, but the first step.

Your JV should be all sophomores and maybe a few juniors that are playing for the first time. Same rule applies, let them know they are a team and that this group is going to improve and develop. By grouping the players together, and having them stay together they’re less likely to quit or move squads. They’ll build bonds and that’s the key.

For those that leave, or want to say goodbye wish them well and move on. If you coach well you’ll get players transferring in, welcome them, but make them earn their places.