Why Does Character Development Matter?
There is a desperate need in our society, community and school for more young men of character. In addition to teaching football, we will devote our time, energy and resources to character development, so that our young men can be transformed into future leaders of tommorow.
Poudre Football has a tradition of toughness, hard work, and most importantly high character, which is the foundation we have built our program on. We strive for the young men who are part of our football program to learn life lessons while they are here that will help them as they move on from Poudre Football, and that from these efforts, they can become the leaders of tomorrow. We believe the outcome of this ongoing effort will reap rewards for decades to come and in turn touch many lives.
We will attract, support and train coaches who will be dual-focused coaches, teaching the game of football, but more importantly character virtues and traits. We are grateful for the rich history of the Poudre football coaches who came before us, and who built a legacy of honor and integrity for our program. Our predecessors have given so much to our program, and we seek to continue their work.
We will accomplish our goals on and off the field with honor and integrity as the primary focus of all that we are doing. This includes the character development of our players, our coaches, our parents and the entire Poudre community.
Character Development For Poudre Football
Player Character Development
1) We will have a weekly time during both the season and off-season devoted to a lesson on character development. We will have a theme for each week and focus on this theme throughout the week. These lesson will be led by our "coach of character" and the lessons will be taught by this coach, other coaches, teachers, former alumni and community members. In addition each Senior on the team will lead a weekly lesson during the year.
2) We will be using cirriculum from afootballjourney.com as the key part of our weekly lessons. There are also accompanying workbooks which will be provided to each plaer. We will also use multimedia including TV clips, movies, etc. to enhance our lessons.
3) Each player will recieve a workbook and character binder that will include the lessons from each week and areas for them to keep track of goals, grades, training class achievements and game statistics. We will use these workbooks and it will be something the players will take with them to refernece in the future.
5) We will have a special ceremony that honors those Seniors in our program who have completed the entire character development program. We want this to be something very special that signifies a passage into manhood and the next phase of their life.
6) Weekly team character and accountability meeting during the season. This will be something that will be done each week after one of the practices where the team will gather and where a short character message will be given and each player will be asked to write down either a goal or something they will be accountable for in that week’s game. This will become an important part of each week’s preparation in being focused on that week’s game and opponent.
7) Retreat – This is something that will be a major bonding time for the team each pre-season. We will try to make this a mix of fun physical challenges and self reflection and personal growth. This could be accomplished in going to a team camp out of town.
Our goal is to prepare and equip our players so that when they leave the Poudre Football family they will have been forever changed, and molded into men of character and integrity, and this in turn will leave a lasting difference on their families, communities and society.
*The Football Journey curriculum we are using
Coaches Character Development
1) We must maintain a culture of character accountability for our coaching staff before we can ever accomplish the goals with our players or parents in our program. Without 100% buy in from our coaches we will not be able to succeed in our mission.
2) We will begin each year by taking each coach through a self assessment where we will have them work through a study guide that will help them to reflect on why they are coaching and help them to come up with their own coaching and life mission statement.
3) The goal is to have our coaches get to a point where they clearly see that while teaching the game of football is important, that teaching our players character and life lessons are even more important to the impact we can make as a coach.
4) Our coaches program will take place on a monthly basis in the offseason at our monthly coaches meetings. During the seson will find time to meet each week. Our coaches will also be part of the players program so they will have additionals exposure to the players cirirculum.
5) We would like to have a regular time where we can bring in an outside coach who has focused on character in their program in some way and can give insight to our coaches. We will also support and encourage our coaches to attend outside events focusing on character development.
6) Coaches Retreat – This will be a big part of getting the coaching staff on the same page and will be done during the pre season. We want this retreat to be a time of bonding, as well as personal growth while getting a clear vision for the team for that year.
Our goal is to support our coaches and their families and help to support them as men, while also helping them to grow as people and become coaches that change the lives of our players. In order to feed our players they will need to be fed. We want to also help them to be husbands and dads of character as well and have a structure in place where this can happen.
Parents Character Development
1) We will conduct an annual parent character meeting with all parents of our football players each fall. The goal for this meeting will be to go over our general expectations of being an organization of character and what we hope our parents will do to help us in achieving this goal.
2) This will include the expectations we have for the team and our fans in how to treat our opponents during and after a game, how to treat the officials, how to best deal with conflict within our team and how to best support your student athlete.
3) We will also go over the program we are using with the team and give them a chance to understand our goals and objectives for this program.