The Turnaround: Thursday

The Turnaround
gamestrat high school football sideline instant replay

Thursday is always a good day. The eve of Friday night. The adrenaline gets flowing.
Butterflies set in. 24 hours until kickoff is a always a great feeling. All the physical work is done. Now it’s all mental. Thursday is always mental Thursday for me and the Westerners. Thursday is silent for us. We do not utter a word on the field. We are silent in our approach and we attack the day with a crisp mental approach. I love this about Thursday’s.

Coach Strunk talking at media luncheon Thursday.

Another reason why I love Thursday’s is because of our LISD Media Luncheon. Every Thursday at 11:30 a.m. the four head coaches of LISD get together with roughly 115 people and media on the second floor of PlainsCapital Park. We have an outstanding catered lunch and we follow that up with a ten minute question and answer period for
the head coaches with David Thetford. Thetford lets it fly and puts us on the spot with tough questions. He is always quick with the wit and isn’t afraid to zing you. It is a blast.

Being in Texas is awesome. I can’t say that enough. Football is a big deal here and LISD shows us how much of a big deal it is with these Media Luncheons. LISD does it right. I am very thankful for that!

So here we are. It’s Thursday. Media Luncheon is happening now and then I am set for an afternoon practice. It’s our last chance to get ready for the Estacado Matadors!

I am looking forward to Friday night!

Fight

You know, life doesn’t always go your way. Football doesn’t either. It’s just how it is. When things don’t go your way you have a choice: either rise up and fight and get through it or fold up the tent and wave the white flag. The choice is yours. Nobody else can make your choice for you. That is the beauty of life. We all control our daily mindset and choices.

So here is the deal: at LHS we will always fight. We will always show-up. We will always battle. We will fight through the bad times and it will help create more good times for us. It’s just like life. You need to learn and move on. Use your failures as the catalyst for future success. Fight through the adversity and live to fight another day.

I have lived my life as a fighter, sometimes literally. It’s who I am. It’s what I try to instill in my team. It’s the only way I know how to go about football and life.

So don’t every write us off. Don’t ever think you know who we are or what we are about. You will never get it. You will never understand us. And quite frankly, we don’t care what your opinion is of us. That is a 100% fact. We will show and be ready fight. We will not be intimidated. We will dig in and fight.

Live your life ready to fight. Live your football life ready to fight.

Randomness

-I don’t understand player celebrations today. Kickers kick game winning kicks and run away from their teammates. They run to the opposite end of the field in a “look at me” effort to celebrate. Whatever happened to running to your teammates and celebrating? Why make people chase you to celebrate? I see the same crap when people score touchdowns. The me generation is nauseating.

-Today is game day. Need some good music to kickoff my workout. No idea what it will be. I have been edgy and wound up all day. Probably need some heavy metal today.

-Coaches who make millions of dollars coaching the game they love and piss it away for stupid reasons. You coaches are the Dummies of the Day.

-Had a great conversation with a group of coaches today. Just sitting around and BS’ing after practice. We sat their for 2 hours. You know you have a good staff when you are doing that. Nobody is running to the exits. We all enjoy each other. The sign of a good staff.

-Jim Tressel was a damn good football coach. He got screwed.

-Joe Torre is my favorite manager/coach of all time. Never panicked. Always pushed the right buttons.

-Bo Jackson is still the best athlete this planet has ever seen.

That is all.

Till next time…FIO.

No More Fumbles

Play Football

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About the Author

Jeff Fisher
Jeff is an award-winning journalist and expert in the field of high school sports, underscored with his appearance on CNBC in 2010 to talk about the big business of high school football in America.Jeff turned to his passion for high school football into an entrepreneurial venture called High School Football America, a digital media company focused on producing original high school sports content for radio, television and the internet.Jeff is co-founder and editor-in-chief of High School Football America, a partner with NFL Play Football.