Fast rise for West Florida program
Pete Schinnick built a winner in two seasons
University of West Florida coach Pete Shinnick arrived at a mid-November practice in a police car, sirens blaring as it zipped across the field. Later, he made his players a promise: If they reached the Division II national championship game, Shinnick said, he’d make an even flashier entrance.
A few weeks later, he landed at the last home practice in a helicopter.
That title-game berth — and subsequent helicopter entrance — capped a remarkable ascent in Pensacola, Fla., as the Argonauts reached the top tier of Division II football in only the second year in the program’s history.
Now Shinnick, who built the program from scratch, is among five finalists for the American Football Coaches Association’s 2017 National Division II Coach of the Year award. The winner will be unveiled at the American Football Coaches Awards show presented by Amway.
Shinnick, 52, took control at West Florida in 2014 and spent two years constructing his team before it appeared in a game. He credits the athletics and school administration for giving him the time and resources to build a program, explaining that he and his staff were “very selective” in recruiting.
“(We tried) to take advantage of all that time in recruiting, create an identity,” Shinnick said. “Our guys have just kind of believed that we could win every game. We told them that their best was good enough to win, that their good would get us beat and that their average would get us killed. We just tried to get their best out of them every time they went out.”
Building a program from the ground up is not without challenges. In 2015, the Argonauts could only practice and scrimmage among themselves. Shinnick, who helped get UNC-Pembroke’s program started in 2005, said it was not always easy to motivate his players.
“If you talk to all of them, they’ll tell you it was long. They’ll tell you it was tiresome. They’ll tell you it was just kind of a brutal process,” Shinnick said of 2015. “But at the same time, they know that it ended up paying great dividends for us.”
The Division II finalists feature three coaches who have now won multiple AFCA regional awards the last six years, including three-time regional coach of the year Lee Owens of Ashland (Ohio) University.
Owens, a former Ohio State assistant who spent nine seasons as head coach at Akron, guided the Eagles to an 11-2 record to improve to 109-46 overall in his 14 seasons with the school.
Shippensburg (Pa.) coach Mark Maciejewski and Midwestern State (Wichita Falls, Texas) coach Bill Maskill, meanwhile, are finalists for a second time. Their teams finished with 10 wins. Shinnick and Tom Sawyer of Winona (Minn.) State are first-time finalists.
“It’s a great group,” Shinnick said. “I really feel privileged. Had a lot of help, got a lot of good coaches working with me, but (I’m) honored to be in the group.”