Coupeville Sports

   Julian Welling is one of several key returning players for first-year CHS football coach Jon Atkins. (John Fisken photo)

It’s the start of a new era.

Jon Atkins is diving in feet-first as the new head football coach at Coupeville High School, with two days of practice now under his belt.

As he and the Wolves get to know each other and prepare for their opener (Sept. 3 at home against South Whidbey), Atkins will be providing us with some of his thoughts on how things are unfolding.

He’ll be delivering a weekly address this season, which will hit the blogosphere Thursday (or early Friday in this case, since I went to bed early and ignored my emails…).

Anyway, without further ado, let’s head over to the Coaches Corner and see what Atkins has to say.

Hopefully David will let me hijack his blog for one post a week.

I don’t know if I have the knack for writing or the whimsical tone that he does, but I will try my best to keep Wolf Nation informed about our football boys throughout the season in this Coach’s Corner.

This is our first Thursday.

We have only had two days of practice and no game planning for an opponent this week; the coaching staff and the players have been working hard teaching, learning and memorizing a new playbook both offensively and defensively.

Each day the players are conditioning and getting their bodies ready for our first game on Saturday 3rd. (More on that in two weeks).

We are creating a new look for the 2016 season.

In the first few days of our fall camp in addition to installing our new defense and offense we have been installing our Core Covenants that will be the pillars in our program that the coaches believe in and will install in our players.

It is my hope that the community will see these behaviors  from our players in the community. 

The first two days we have focused on Competition and Leadership.

The players know that it is the coaching staff expectation that they compete in the classroom, on the field, or even in our Day 1 thumb war tournament competition, which ended with Co-Champions Woody Liquidano and Teo Keilwitz.

The second covenant is Leadership; all of our players are expected to be Leaders, and demonstrate Leadership in their position groups, in their PE classes and in the community.

We will install the last three covenants: Family, Commitment and Toughness.

We are thrilled to have the players out; we are still missing some faces from last year and would love to have them back out this year as well.

I believe that our program is going in a great direction and would love to have them hop on this train and enjoy the ride.

One of the differences you will see, well, you will hear if you come to practice, is a bit of practice music.

If you drive by practice you might hear some different sounds as our practice playlist changes up each day. 

We expect some AC/DC, Disturbed, Drake and Jake Owens to make an appearance on tomorrow’s practice playlist.

The coaching staff likes to make sure practice stay light and fun while getting our work done.

Next Coach’s Corner I will look to take on Burlington and La Conner in the La Conner Jamboree in our first test for Wolf Nation in 2016.

I am excited to meet all the football parents at our meeting Saturday, Aug. 20 at 4:00 PM.

PS — Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter — @WolfPrideFB.

Coach Atkins