Success not just numbers, coaches say
Dunbar and Gilman will play football tonight for the first time in 12 years, but there was a time when they were regular rivals.
Dunbar coach Lawrence Smith and Gilman coach Tim Holley Jr. played for their respective teams when they were part of the Maryland Scholastic Association. For 75 years, the MSA governed boys sports at Baltimore City public schools and Baltimore-area private and parochial schools until it disbanded in 1993.
“Anytime we can play an MSA school, I’m thrilled to have that opportunity,” Holley said.
“I played against Dunbar as a kid, so my loyalties and allegiances to the MSA and the schools that were part of the MSA still kind of tug on my heartstrings. I thought it would be a great opportunity for us to do something, at least as high school your coaching staff,” Strunk said.
Chad McCormick also coaches at one of the state’s biggest schools, Old Mill, so he too has a large potential talent pool. His Patriots have qualified for the playoffs 17 straight times and won state championships in 2009 and 2011. To him, numbers don’t mean that much, either.
“Obviously having a bigger school, you have more kids to choose from, but if you have the right kids, it doesn’t matter how big your school is,” McCormick said.
Many coaches share that philosophy. Much more important to building a consistently strong program — whether that means winning state championships, winning county championships or being in the hunt year after year — is the work that builds and sustains the foundation for a competitive team.
Consistency in coaching, commitment from the athletes and a well-attended offseason program rank high among head coaches’ requirements for keeping a program going even through the dips in talent that come in a cyclical sport such as football.
Wilde Lake coach Mike Harrison, who led the Wildecats to the Class 3A state title in 2010 and was an assistant coach to Doug Duval for four of their other five titles, has seen the same thing in all of Howard County’s successful programs.
“The kids have the expectation to win and they work hard enough to put themselves in the position to win,” Harrison said. “It was the same with Brian [Van Deusen for four state titles at River Hill]. There’s no magic to it. The kids just expect to win.”
Building a tradition of winning and competing for state championships will keep the players coming.
“I definitely think tradition is a pretty important part for any school,” McCormick said. “There’s probably a number of things that vary from program to program, like football interest in the area, but programs like Damascus and Fort Hill, even though they’re smaller schools, they’re the types of football teams that can probably compete with any level football in the state of Maryland. I don’t know if the school size matters as much as the program.”
If the size of the school directly affected the strength of the football team, Damascus could never have won the Class 3A championship last season.
While the Hornets had the largest rosters of any team in the state semifinals last year in any classification, their school is the second-smallest of 51 3A schools. Dundalk, the team they beat in the state final, 55-14, has about 330 more students, according to state enrollment numbers used to determine the four classifications.
Despite being a small school, Dunbar has no trouble reloading every year because Lawrence Smith Tim Holley Jr. Howard players practice last week. The Lions have gone unbeaten in Howard County the past two seasons and reached the state semifinals. More important to success than school size, said Howard coach Bruce Strunk, “is the kids buying into your program. That and the consistency of your coaching staff.” athletes from around the city want to play for the Poets. That happens when you’ve won nine state championships and a state-record 50 playoff games. Dunbar has won state titles in Class 3A, 2A and1A and is one of only seven programs to win three in a row, along with Urbana, which won four straight, Wilde Lake, Fort Hill, Middletown, Seneca Valley and Springbrook.
Coach Lawrence Smith said he doesn’t know where his team’s regional championship and county championship plaques are. All that matters is hanging a new state title banner in the Dunbar gym.
“We ran off 14 straight regional championships, but that’s not what we want to do here,” Smith said. “We want to win state championships, and the kids buy into it.”
Dunbar, now a Class 2A school, draws roughly120 players and they can come from anywhere in the city, but Smith points out that much bigger schools than his also draw from across the city.
Some programs, including South Carroll, which has been in the Class 2A regional playoffs seven straight times, try to hook players as early as possible.
Cavaliers coach Steve Luette and his staff stay connected with the recreation program coaches and invite them to meetings. They designate one game each season for the recreation players to attend for free.
“When you get a winning tradition, you get more players at the youth level who want to play football,” Luette said. “Sometimes it’s hard to get started but it filters right down to the rec program and then kids can’t wait to get on that high school team.”