Any Given Saturday: Volunteers, parents make youth football Saturdays a reality

OCOEE — Most Saturdays, the sun is still rising when they arrive at Bulldog Field.

For members of the Ocoee Pop Warner Executive Board — such as league commissioner Sueann Cotanche, football commissioner John Townsend and Steve Coffman, the operations manager for the concession stand — the day starts hours before the first ballcarrier is tackled.

“First ones in, last ones out,” said Cotanche, who has been involved with the program for five years. “We get here at 7 a.m. … and if all goes well we could be out of here by 7 p.m. But, if all doesn’t go well, you could be here as late as 8 or 9 p.m.”

It is a reality that often goes unnoticed, but for the dozens of Pop Warner and youth football programs around Central Florida, each and every Saturday is made possible by the work of volunteers and parents.

Board members, concession-stand workers and any number of coaches for each respective football and cheer team are all unpaid volunteers. They all share the motivation for adding sometimes an additional 20 hours per week to their own schedules — which usually include full-time jobs — centered around the idea of doing it for the kids.

And some folks, such as Bulldogs’ Unlimited weight class coach Bobby Clark, have been doing it for the kids for more than a decade.

“I got together with a group of my buddies and … we figured we’d start coaching,” said Clark, who has been with Ocoee Pop Warner for 16 years (eight as a head coach). “I enjoy seeing the kids go to the next level, high school.

“We’ve got kids at Ocoee (High School); we’ve got them at West Orange,” he said. “They know where they came from — we teach them the fundamentals so they can take it to the next level and that (high school) coach probably has a little easier time with them.”

Clark said he and most coaches usually spend roughly six to seven hours per week at practice (teams usually practice three or four days per week) in addition to another four or five hours at home game-planning for the next opponent. Saturdays are full days, as Clark and other coaches help out with various game day operations (Clark manned a pulled-pork sandwich stand for hours on Saturday, before his Bulldogs took on Dr. Phillips in the day’s last game) before and after their own game.

Cotanche estimates she puts in about 30 hours per week — on top of her full-time job. Steve Coffman, who has run the concession stand for Ocoee’s program for the past three years, puts in about 20 hours per week. Coffman’s Saturdays can be long and grueling as he mans the grill and fryer for the concession stand for hours at a time without much of a break.

“They need people in here that are going to do the job to make the money for the kids, so they can have football, so they can have cheerleading,” Coffman said. “We make a profit (from concessions) to where we put it back in the program. … (In the) three years that I’ve been here, it has been profitable every single year.”

Although not every volunteer or coach shares the extent of those workloads, there are plenty of people who are integral to creating game days — and some don’t have kids in the program currently.

“It’s very funny — a lot of people (who) are on the board and are also coaches — a lot of them don’t have children in the program anymore,” Cotanche said. “I think this association is a very tight-knit group in a very positive way.”

For many, putting in the time is just a way to give back — and be around the game they love. Jerry Middleton is the defensive coordinator for the Ocoee High School varsity football program but still finds time to coach the Bulldogs’ Junior Midgets team. 

Part of what anchors the loyal core group of volunteers is the small-town atmosphere that pervades Ocoee home games — where everybody who’s anybody usually can be seen on a Saturday.

“There are parents that are at the Tiny Mites game (usually at 9:30 a.m.) (who) will stay for the oldest kids’ game (usually at 4 p.m.),” Clark said.

And although the hard work of these volunteers can often be frustrating, and coaches and parents will sometimes bump heads, the overwhelming majority of the folks involved in Ocoee’s program, and programs around the region, do it because — in one way or another — they enjoy it.

“You couldn’t do this if you didn’t enjoy it,” Cotanche said. “If you think this is something you have to do, it’s not the right place for you.”

Contact Steven Ryzewski at [email protected].