Pressure to win: Prep football coaching tenure decreasing in South Dakota

In his 51 years of coaching high school football in South Dakota, Tom Long knows all too well the strains that come with the job.

But through all the trials and tribulations, Long said coaches are more critical of themselves than people from the outside.

"I think that there's people that are critics of what you do," Long said. "But I think you are your own worst critic. So you kind of go home at night or after a game or a season and you kind of self evaluate and I always thought, 'What did I do wrong and what did they do right?' "

Long, who is the longest-tenured football coach in the history of the state, understands, like all football coaches, there's plenty of outside pressure scrutinizing their job.

For many, the solution is simple: win.

But winning comes at a cost as fewer coaches are staying on the sidelines for long.

In a survey of 94 football coaches conducted by The Daily Republic, the average coaching tenure for a varsity high school football coach in South Dakota is 18 years.

In the state's history, Long is the lone 50-year coach, while there's only 12 40-year football coaches. The number jumps to 96 for 30-year coaches, but only 41 percent of the 94 coaches have been coaching for two decades or more. The average coaching tenure for a football coach at their respective school is 12 years and the average age of the 94 coaches is 42.

"It's becoming more and more rare to see those coaches with exceedingly long careers," South Dakota High School Activities Association Assistant executive director John Krogstrand said. "There's probably a lot of things that go into that with different job pressures and relationships with administrators or parents or whatever."

Long, 74, is now a volunteer assistant under his son Chris Long at Garretson. He started coaching in the fall of 1965 at Mitchell Notre Dame and later had coaching stints at Aberdeen Roncalli, Dakota Wesleyan University, University of South Dakota-Springfield, Wessington Springs, Salem, Tea, Sioux Falls O'Gorman (junior high) and the last two years as a volunteer assistant for the Blue Dragons.

He's experienced many highs and lows at all his stops. Mitchell Notre Dame was the mythical state champ in 1969 and Wessington Springs was the Class 9A state runner-up in 1991, under Long, who also experienced .500 seasons and years when he didn't win a game.

"I kind of encountered the gamut from the standpoint of wins and losses," said Long, who said he has a losing overall coaching record. "It's been more of a losing situation than a winning situation, but you think a guy would be smart enough to quit, but I never was."

Coaching football in the 21st century

A major change during Long's coaching career has been the dedication to workouts, both during the offseason and in-season. He said Mitchell Notre Dame didn't have a weight room and Roncalli finally got a Universal Gym machine in the early 1970s.

"The kids at Garretson this summer lifted four days a week," Long said. "They did agility drills outside and then of course, the coaches can get together with the kids and run plays and do stuff like that in the summertime, which was pretty much unheard of when I first started. Now it's almost a year-round deal because you are either lifting or you are doing stuff in the summertime."

Along with sacrificing time with their families, today's coaches face a delicate balancing act between winning and keeping everyone satisfied with playing time.

"All parents like to see their kids play," Bridgewater-Emery/Ethan coach Jeff VanLeur said. "That's not always possible. The community likes to win and be on the winning side and that always doesn't happen either. So there's little stresses to try to put together the best team you can and of course to win because everybody does like to win, but you have to kind of handle those in stride."

VanLeur has coached at Emery for 38 years and has also experienced the ups and downs of the job. But winning helps cure everything and VanLeur has done plenty of that. He's won six state titles during his tenure.

"There's always pressure to win and to keep a program going," VanLeur said. "There's years that you feel that pressure, but I always figure wins and losses take care of themselves and you teach the fundamentals and let things lie where they lie, get kids to work hard and good things will happen."

Parkston football coach Eric Norden has been coaching for 22 years and he first started as a golf coach. He thought he was ready to make the move to football coach, but was still surprised at everything else that came with the job.

"Being a head coach involves a lot more than just the sport," Norden said. "It's the psychology of working with the students, athletes, the parents, getting things done with paperwork and state expectations, rules and regulations there. Then you have all of the financial stuff that you have to deal with and the season extends so far outside of what everybody else sees as the season. It's a bit more overwhelming than what you would anticipate."

But he said the pressures and challenges are worth it once he gets around the athletes.

"Most coaches stick it out because they just love being around the kids," Norden said. "They can cause pressure. They can cause stress, but they are also the reason you are out there. Your good coaches are the ones that really understand what it's about and understand it's about the kids."

Other coaches agree and say their job is to not to get caught up in the wins and losses, but rather focus on bettering the players.

"Everybody wants to win, but if you can carry that balance between focusing on winning but also providing a great experience for these young people, I think you can be more successful," said Mitchell coach Kent VanOverschelde, who led the Kernels to the Class 11AA state title last fall.

While VanOverschelde and VanLeur are two of the more experienced coaches in the state, Virg Polak sees a trend of less experienced coaches in South Dakota.

Polak, executive secretary of the South Dakota Football Coaches Association, said the days of having 30 and 40-year coaching tenures are almost over. He cited low pay, coaches moving into administration roles and family commitments as reasons for fewer coaches sticking it out.

"There's always new ones coming in and some very good young coaches, but it's very unusual," Polak said. "There's getting to be less and less of the 30-year coach and things of that nature. There's getting to be less and less of those that stayed in the business."

Polak said the SDFBCA plans on bringing along the next wave of coaches differently than in recent years.

"The thing is you want them when they are ready," Polak said. "You want them to start out so they see how to handle certain situations. We are working on the early stages of a mentoring program to help young coaches handle different situations."

Mentoring young coaches

Krogstrand said the SDHSAA supports the coaches association's idea of a mentoring program to help younger coaches. The initial plan is that each of the eight regions has a veteran coach to guide the younger coaches in their careers.

"That's something that really our coaches association is leaning on and we are certainly fully supportive of," Krogstrand said. "We are going to try and help them develop that program because absolutely that's one of the best things you can have is have that veteran to kind of guide you through the ringer if you will a little bit when you are first starting out on the coaching side."

One of those new coaches is Ben Connot, who is stepping into his first head football coaching job this fall at Colome, the defending Class 9B state champs.

But Connot said he doesn't feel any pressure coaching the Cowboys after they won last year's state title.

"I feel fortunate having pieces that were there as far as experience," he said. "But I don't feel too much pressure. I don't think the kids do either. It is kind of a new chapter in the book, a lot of those kids want to write their own legacy. We don't feel too much pressure."

Connot, 22, asked for advice from Colome Athletic Director Drew Weber and long-time Cowboy assistant coach Gene Bertram after he took the job. The thing that resonated with Connot was that he can't make everybody happy in his profession.

"Coach Weber is the one that told me-you can't keep everyone happy," Connot said. "So don't expect to do that. Just do your best and be content with what you have and try to work from there."