Rahne finally settling in with Monarchs — and his family
NORFOLK — When Ricky Rahne accepted the football coaching job at Old Dominion in December, he left his wife, Jennifer, and their two children behind and moved from Pennsylvania to Norfolk.
Living in various hotels around town and, eventually, a borrowed beachfront home in Virginia Beach’s Sandbridge neighborhood, Rahne led what he called an “incredibly hodgepodged” and lonely existence until he and his family moved into a house about a mile from his office on campus this summer.
Recent rainstorms provided a reminder that, in case there was any doubt, the Rahnes are fully settled.
“Our roof was leaking last night,” Rahne said. “I mean, nothing makes you feel like home more than when your home starts having issues.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean things are normal. With the 2020 season postponed until the spring thanks to COVID-19, Rahne and the Monarchs can only go through limited practices.
Upperclassmen, who expressed concerns to their coach about a lack of familiarity with new players, go through footballspecific drills in mixedclass groups specifically designed to build chemistry.
The twice-weekly workouts, combined with lifting weights three days a week, have provided Rahne, a former Penn State assistant, with his first live looks at his players.
If nothing else, in the absence of blocking and tackling, he’s getting a feel for who can do what.
“We’re starting to see some football skills,” Rahne said. “We’re starting to see, probably more importantly, what guys can take coaching.”
Meanwhile,
Rahne and his staff have had to manage the challenges of operating a football program during a pandemic.
With the rest of the student body back on campus, AD Wood Selig said, athletes are confining themselves to small “pods” of teammates and roommates. They’re wearing masks, maintaining social distance and washing their hands frequently to keep alive the hope of playing fall sports in the spring.
Selig said Rahne has done a “terrific job” of keeping his players safe while getting them better under difficult conditions.
“I know it’s been anything but easy for him, but the manner in which he has done this has had the outward appearance of, ‘I got this. We can do it. It’s easy,’ ” Selig said. “But he’s probably just like the proverbial duck, looking good on the surface of the water, but paddling like crazy underneath. He’s doing a lot of that.”
The paddling will continue. Over the next several weeks, Rahne and his staff will start installing game plans. In team meetings and film sessions limited by social distancing, they’ll try to influence the way players evaluate opponents.
It’s all part of a seemingly perpetual preseason that Rahne hopes will ultimately pay dividends.
“I’m excited about the plans we have for this entire fall,” he said. “And I honestly do believe that we’re going to come out of this as a better football team.”
Selig, in the midst of the oddest of his 35 falls as an athletic administrator, has marveled at Rahne’s ability to advance recruiting and training while managing a large staff in a new city.
ODU, having opted out of the season last month, is Conference USA’s lone program not making a run at playing.
“He’s done a magnificent job in not just keeping the program together, but we continue to make strides to improve our program,” Selig said. “And these are hard times to make much progress.”
The insatiably curious Rahne, who frequently dives into topics that pique his interest via Wikipedia to the point that he has donated to the site, started acclimating himself to the area before he even had the job.
When he came to ODU for his interview, Rahne wanted to make sure he was pronouncing the name of the city correctly. He was presented with two options by Selig and associate AD Jena Virga before asking which way the locals say it.
Ever since, Rahne’s pronunciation of “Nahfik” has made him sound like he grew up here.
It’s further evidence that a coach new to the area has come home.
“I was like, ‘You know, I’m going to go with the local version,’ ” Rahne said. “I’ve said ‘Nahfik’ from the very beginning, even in my (introductory) press conference. It still throws recruits off and recruits’ parents off every once in a while. They’re like, ‘Wait, what?’ I’ve decided that I am a local now, so that’s how I’m going to say it.”