Richardson, Scott more than coaches for Chandler football
They lead with discipline and compassion, with commanding voices and open hearts. They’ve seen the good and the bad, the worst and the best.
They’ve tied the Chandler High School football culture together with life-lasting impactful words and messages, understanding where they’ve been and how to get to the winning side.
Running backs coach Eric Richardson, the senior member of the coaching staff for the fourth-ranked team in the nation, has been at the school for 24 years.
Defensive backs coach Russell Scott has been there for 20 years.
They are the men the players go to when they have a personal issue at home or in the classroom or in society.
They are the men coach Rick Garretson points to when a reporter asks to do a story on the family culture that has been a big part of Chandler’s four consecutive state football championships.
“They’ve seen the good times, the bad times, the tough times, how that developed,” said Garretson, in his second season as head coach, after serving as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach under Shaun Aguano.
“Ohana” is a word seen all over Chandler football. On the stadium press box. In the locker room. It is a Hawaiian saying that means “family,” something Aguano took with him from Hawaii, where he was raised, and to Chandler when he came in to be Jim Ewan’s offensive coordinator in the late 2000s.
Ewan left in 2010 after 11 seasons, after which Aguano’s ‘ ohana’ culture bloomed with a tight-knit coaching staff and with players willing to do whatever it took to excel on the field and outside of the school.
There,
it was Richardson and
Scott that helped lay the foundation..
Both also are track and field coaches who have been the bedrock to that dynasty, as well. The Chandler girls track teams have won 13 of the past 14 state championships (there was no state meet last year because of the pandemic). The Chandler boys have won three of the past four boys track and field state titles.
They have enough rings to cover their fingers twice or thrice over.
“I saw the dark days,” Richardson said, going back to 24 years as a coach at Chandler. “I was at the bottom level of the Hamilton experience.”
When Hamilton opened in 1998, Chandler lost student athletes to the new school that opened further south on Arizona Avenue. It was an uphill battle to try to beat Hamilton in football. It took 18 tries to finally break through and beat the Huskies in 2013.
Now Hamilton is trying to catch back up to Chandler, which, in 2014, behind quarterback Bryce Perkins, won its first state title since capturing a mythical championship in 1949.
Since its run of four straight state titles, Chandler is 55-5 and has won its last 30 games.
Boys to men
But it’s not just the athletes that led to this kind of dynasty. It takes a family led by mentors. And Richardson and Scott command the room.
“We went through the chaos years of trying to get kids to believe in what we were trying to do,” Richardson said. “When we got Shaun in there, it helped with the stability. We had a bona fide message that the kids believed in.
“Russell has always done the leadership part of it. I’ve done it indirectly with individuals. He did it more with the group. It’s a belief system that if we’re doing what we’re capable of doing, we like our chances all the time. That’s how we go about it.”
There is an open-door policy with kids being able to contact their coaches any time with any problem.
Confronting racial injustice
Questions of fairness resonated throughout the Chandler football community on Memorial Day, when George Floyd, a Black man, died with his neck under the knee of white Minneapolis police officer. The viral video left a sickening imprint on the minds of players.
That same day, Scott, who is the head of the schools’ student athletes’ leadership group, sent a video message to the athletes to let them know to talk to their family, to their coaches, if they had questions about what was going on.
“Not only are you tough football players and great members of this community, but you are fine young men, and you know that,” Scott says in the video. “That’s always been the goal. And we talk about it all the time. I challenged you coming into this pandemic that not only physically but mentally you had to be ready. This is a mental challenge for us, too, about doing the right thing. it’s a character issue, as well.”
The Floyd death sparked protests and
riots across the nation through much of the summer. “A lot of kids were disturbed,” Richardson said. “We helped them through that by giving them information and the things that they should do. You really never think you have to give instructions to a kid on how to behave if a law officer pulls you over. But it’s something you have to talk about.”
Scott said the coaches have always made the importance on developing the players for adult life, becoming successful citizens.
“We get them prepared for being grown men,” Scott said. “We call the process, ‘Boys to men.’ We step away from it on Thursdays. We talk about leadership. We talk about the types of tools and understanding of the process of growing from a boy to a man. And we talk about academics. That’s got to be top notch. Without academics, they can’t be out here. They have to understand if they’re not going to be committed in there, they’re not going to be committed here.”
Senior running back Eli Sanders, one of the state’s top backs who has committed to Boise State, said that Richardson and Scott are huge mentors.
“We really look up to them every day, aspire to be like them,” Sanders said. “They have great words of advice for everyone.”