I recently had the opportunity to meet with head football coach Mr. Cowart for an exclusive interview.  I hope you enjoy this very engaging and interesting discussion -Nick Russo  

What inspires you daily to give your best at coaching?

   I think I owe it to the game of football and certainly to the student athletes. I guess I get my inspiration from trying to be the best I can be for the players and certainly the other coaches that I work for.

How large of a part does coaching play in your life?

   Time wise, it plays a rather large part. I think it’s a part of who I am but it isn’t everything that I am. But I enjoy it and I think it’s something I have a passion for. Anything worth doing is worth doing well and I try to always give my best at it, so yeah it’s a big part of who I am.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Do you have a philosophy that you live by when it comes to coaching? In other words, do you have a certain motto or attitude toward coaching?

   I don’t know if I could put it into a slogan or a motto, as you put it, but I think in coaching, just like anything, you want to be competitive and you want to give your absolute best effort. I really think with a lot of things in life including sports, you have to earn it, you have to out-work people. For us as a football team, no matter if it’s this year or ten years from now, we’re going to try and outwork the people we play against.

How do you motivate your players to work harder and make them a successful team?

   Motivation is a funny word, I think you have to be driven within yourself and motivation comes and goes. But if you have a drive to want to be the best, then it doesn’t really matter what I say. You have to find guys that will lead your team. We have a slogan, it’s “bad teams nobody leads, good teams coaches lead, and great teams players lead”.

Do you find that new challenges and obstacles with every new season?

   No question, every year is a completely different year with completely new challenges. That’s what’s great about coaching a sport, every day something new happens that you have to handle and take care of and attack. Every year gives you something new.

How has the game changed over the years?

   It’s different, but here’s the thing: football is a pretty simple sport. If you block people well and tackle people well, that makes for a pretty successful football team. Yes there are new schemes, guys doing new stuff, new penalties so it’s certainly different. But the nuts and bolts of the game are the same. If you can do particular things well then you have the recipe for a very good football team.

Do you have increasing concerns and precautions in regards to injuries in light of recent events?

   Yeah, we’ve certainly seen it up close. We had a player, Matt Senchak get knocked unconscious which was a really scary moment, scarier than anything I had ever seen in person. That piggybacking off of what happened to Hayden Hamilton at Laurel High School, it just made for a very interesting scenario and certainly everyone was thinking about that when Matt got hurt. We do our best as a coaching staff to protect the players and I think there are some changes nowadays. We are obligated as coaches to take concussion and cardiac arrest tests on a yearly basis, so we now have more medical knowledge at our fingertips in regards to head injuries and things of that nature. I think the increase in the level of knowledge helps, but football is a violent sport and there are certainly injuries are going to happen every year.