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New Spiders coach: I will be myself

Photo by Marty Price

Concord High School football coach Glen Padgett (left) talks with his quarterback, Jordan Havinga (right) between plays as Concord scrimmages at West Charlotte in Charlotte, NC.

By Steve Winzenread | Independent Tribune

Published: August 21, 2009

CONCORD - Glen Padgett fully understands the challenge he has embraced. For the first time since 1979, the Concord Spiders football team will not be coached by E.Z. Smith III.

"E.Z. and I are best of friends," new Spiders head coach Padgett said. "I was here for 11 years. I know the tradition and the expectations of the community and of the school and the expectations that the football team has. But you can only be yourself.

"A lot of times I think you see with young coaches they try to emulate someone else and they're not themselves. I'm not another person; I'm me. And so I have to do what I'm comfortable with and what I feel like works for me and what works best for us as a program and as a team."

Padgett will take his variety of coaching experience and apply it to the Spiders.

"There are many things that I have taken from the 11 years that I was here and have parlayed those things over as a head coach," he said. "And there's things I've learned in being a head coach in other places and in coaching at James F. Byrnes High School (Duncan, S.C.) in the early '80s that have kind of come into this, too. So I really don't worry about that.

"It doesn't do me any good to worry. It's counterproductive. For me, the focal point of what I'm doing is to make this team the best team they can be. The other stuff is just peripheral. You can't get weighed down or bogged down by it, you've just got to focus on trying to get these players to be the best players that they can, so that we can be the best team that we can be."

After a 3-7 season a year ago, a young Concord team is trying to improve this year by having more players participating and with better speed and strength.

"I've been real pleased with our summer workouts," Padgett said. "Our numbers have been very good. We averaged 70 to 80 kids per night.

"We spent a good part of each night in the summer doing speed and agility drills, coupled with strength training, of course. I've been very pleased with the enthusiasm.

"Enthusiasm is infectious. ... We have about 95 kids right now. That's been a real surprise. I was thinking about 80. Our numbers have steadily grown."

The drills appear to be paying off.

"We tested them (July 27), and our 40's improved significantly," Padgett said. "I haven't done the tallies on them (as of Aug 3), but we probably had a dozen kids that were running under 5-flat to now 21 or 22 running under a 5-flat. A number of them dropped two-tenths of a second, which is significant. And a lot of it was focusing on how to run, how to start. Exploding. Those types of things.

"I think that excited a lot of our players to see their times get better. And our strength got a little bit better over the summer, too. We were pleased with that as well."

Padgett has enough coaching help on his staff that "I'm going to concentrate mainly on the varsity," he said. "Quarterbacks and receivers as well as inside and outside linebackers. I'm fortunate enough not to have to coach a position, which has been a big bonus for me

"I have coached the quarterbacks the last couple of years at North (Mecklenburg). Coach (Brad) Faw is doing drills with (the Spiders). When we do seven-on-sevens, I do most of the read drills in terms of them knowing where to go, what to look for, stems out of coverages and things like that. It's freed me up to focus on everything instead of focusing on a position."