12 new coaches face test as spring football kicks off
There will be plenty of new faces on football fields around Palm Beach County when spring football starts today.
Since the end of the 2017 season, 12 teams have made coaching changes: Benjamin, Boca Raton, Cardinal Newman, Inlet Grove (which has not announced a new coach), John I. Leonard, Lake Worth, Royal Palm Beach, Seminole Ridge, Somerset Canyons, Suncoast, Village Academy and West Boca Raton.
Today they’ll put on their whistles and pick up their clipboards for their first day of practice.
“To me, spring’s about getting basics down and building that camaraderie as a team,” said new West Boca coach Mike Cook.
Like the new coaches at Benjamin (Eric Kresser) and Royal Palm Beach (interim coach Elton Gilkes), Cook offers continuity, having been on the previous coach’s staff. Unlike Kresser, Cook (and Gilkes) have had minimal time to prepare for spring. Cook was hired April 17. Gilkes was named interim coach on April 12.
“It’s a little (hectic), but like I said, I’ve been part of the program,” Cook said. “So I know a lot of the kids already. … It’s not like I’m walking into a new school.”
Kresser is in a similar position, but he has had much more time to prepare. Kresser took over for Ron Ream, who was Palm Beach County’s longest-tenured coach, leading the Bucs for nearly four decades. Kresser was named the head coach in December, the same week Ream announced his retirement.
He’s used that time to put together his staff, but the start of spring practice will be a little anticlimactic — many of his
players are busy playing spring sports such as baseball, lacrosse and track.
“We’re going to be missing about half our team,” Kresser said. “So we’re going to start up Monday, but it’s going to be really light. … We may be without half of our team for two weeks.”
The eight other teams that changed coaches looked outside their programs to replace last year’s coaches. Boca Raton and Leonard looked outside the county, hiring Cooper City coach Brandon Walker (the son of former Glades Day coach Byron Walker) and Geor- gia coach Keith Chattin to replace Eric Davis and Kevin Fleury, respectively.
The remaining six hired coaches have worked around Palm Beach County. They range from first-year coaches (Cardinal Newman’s Joe Molina, Somerset Canyon’s Tom Halikman, Village Academy’s Dameon Hughes) to experienced former head coaches (Seminole Ridge’s Rick Casko, Suncoast’s Brian Pulaski, Lake Worth’s Don Hanna).
Molina, who had been an assistant under longtime Dwyer coach Jack Daniels, is a Newman alumnus, but he is still teaching at Dwyer for the time being. While still on the Panthers’ campus, Molina said he occasionally picks Daniels’ brain.
“I’ve been fortunate,” Molina said. “Jack’s been kind of molding me to basically take over a program one day and given me a lot of duties. A lot of the stuff, you know what to do. Now it’s a matter of getting it done.”
Molina and the rest of the new coaches now get to handle the duties of being a head coach in Palm Beach County, where expectations can be high.
“I wouldn’t call it pressure,” Molina said. “It’s more exciting, you know? The fact that you now have a chance to build the program the way you want.”