Greg Schrader has coached at a lot of places in life. Now, he is the new varsity head coach of the WHS football team.During this time he has gained experience. He coached the Thornapple Kellogg football team for six years, and at Caledonia for another six years. During his time at TK he started coaching at the 5th grade level, and he moved up with his players until he coached at the 8th grade level until he went to Caledonia where he coached at the varsity level.
During his high school years leaned on sports. “I didn't take the traditional path through high school,” Schrader stated.
. In other words, school was just hard for him. Football helped him through this, he stated that “My coaches really helped me,” he said. " I wanted to do the same thing for other people".
One of the biggest reasons that he is such an advocate for becoming a student athlete is because he believes that through sports he can teach kids things that they will take with them through our life. “I think sports is a great way to teach boys and girls accountability,” he said.
As the new football head coach, he wants to change the mind set of the program. He wants everybody to come together like a family and not 11 individual guys. In other words he wants there to be this sense of closeness between his players and wants them to build a kind of brotherhood.
The mindset of the program is not the only thing he would like to change, he also wants to help build the program up. He wants to have group managers to get our presence out in the community, a media team where we can show people what we have been working on and how we have improved. For example, imagine if there was a player that did not get a lot of playing time, but recently he has been shining in practice. This helps give the ones that aren't playing allot their commendations so it feels like they have accomplished something.
For coach Schrader, success is not about wins or losses. “The way that I will measure success this year is not about wins or losses but whether they have improved,” he said. “I want to do it like this because if we are so hung up on whether we win or lose that we will not focus on the things that matter like whether we did all we could.”
Compared to Coach Brewster, Coach Schrader's coaching style is different. "Brewster comes from a mind set where he sees the big picture, but I focus on the small details,” he said. Coach Brewster believes as long as you are doing your assignment, he does not really care how you do it because he likes to focus on the bigger things. But Schrader likes to look at exactly how a player's sediment is being done. He wants it to be done exactly how he believes is the best way.
