Windermere High football team's bond produces success

The formula for success at the core of the most prolific era of football in Windermere High history isn’t some big secret coach Riki Smith and his team are hiding from their competition. There’s no secret ingredient that will all of a sudden make it easier to dedicate the time and work it takes to win games. No, in fact, Smith will flat-out tell you the difference between teams that are great and those that fall short is something everyone already knows.

“I feel like all the great teams, whether it’s in the NFL, college or those at the high school level — they all have a bond that’s just undeniable, unbreakable within their locker room,” he said. “So, when I was trying to develop a theme for this season, I found a Bible verse, Hebrews 13:1 that just essentially says ‘Let brotherly love continue.’ That idea of loving your brother and investing in those relationships really stuck with me and has been at the core of what we’re using to help these young men grow as both people and as football players.” 

When examining the great teams he was part of and those throughout the history of the game of football, Smith remembered moments of passion, such as the famous speech former Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow made or the one Baltimore Ravens great Ed Reed made to his team and he pondered the motivations for those moments.

“When you see those famous moments in locker rooms or in the huddle like the Tebow speech and Ed Reed’s speech, like, how do you get to that point to where you’re crying out to your team so passionately?” Smith said. “To me the answer was love. The only thing in this world that is able to make someone that passionate about a game is the love they have for the people they’re doing it with and the thing they are doing. For us, that’s what we’re trying to instill here. I want these guys to love to come here, love to practice, love to lift weights, love everything about this program and the relationships and bonds that they’re building with each other because ultimately that’s what will last.”

Photo by Tammy Forrester

LOVE WINS

The understanding of the game’s real impact on the lives of his players has painted a clear picture for Smith on how he should approach the continuing development of his program.

“We all have things going on in our own world, outside of sports,” he said. “Every single player on the team has issues outside of football, so what I’m trying to build is a program that is like a second home to them … a place where they can just be part of a group of young men that love (one another) like brothers and build relationships and memories that will last a lifetime. I like to think that someday, these guys will be in (one another’s) weddings and, just generally, outside of this game they can take what they did and learned here and apply it to the rest of their lives.”

This type of culture, when done to genuinely put the growth of the person first and the development of the athlete after, come with a side effect of winning and that’s exactly what the Wolverines have been experiencing. 

Take the offensive line for example. This position group rarely gets any notoriety and is tasked with physically dominating the defender in front of them to prevent them from getting to your teammate with the ball. This task is tremendously taxing on a body and requires an incredible amount of mental and physical preparation. Simply put, if a team’s culture is focused on loving your brother, then doing what is required for your teammate in preparation becomes easier to prioritize.  

“When you’re in the trenches, loving the guy next to you just makes it your job, honestly,” Wolverines offensive lineman Deuce Forrester said. “If I know and I can trust the guy next to me to do their job, every time I line up across the opponent, I know I can do my job, because I know they’ll help me when we need to work together on the field and off the field, too. A lot of the reason we’ve been able to be successful on the field is the time we all spend together during the week. That’s really a super important part of our success as a team, and as a line, we love to hang out and just spend time together. … The more we stay connected off the field, the better we work together on the field.”

Another example of the same type of effect a brotherly-love-type culture can have on winning is from that of a lockdown, set-it-and-forget-it player at the cornerback position. This style of player is given a special level of trust by his teammates, essentially when you put a cornerback on an island and give him the responsibility of defending a receiver without any sort of help in the secondary, as a coaching staff and as a team, you’re telling him I trust you to do your job on the field every single time without fail. 

Windermere senior C.J. Bronaugh is that type of player for the Wolverines secondary.  

“This is my second year here, and from the moment I stepped foot on this campus, everyone on this team welcomed me with open arms, and we were able to become really good friends,” he said. “Because we’re always around (one another), it was easy to get close. We all pretty much hang out all the time outside of school, go to recovery together, work out together. And I feel like when everyone’s this close and the team is so tight like this, it makes a lot of things smoother on the field. And with my role, knowing those guys trust me like they do, it makes me feel good. I’m happy to know they see me as someone who helps make the team stronger and helps them do their jobs. When each of us can have trust in each other, then we are able to be accountable and hold each other accountable. Being able to do that is important with anything in life because without accountability trust isn’t there in a way.”