Tradition and Excellence
The following is the full transcript of an interview with Coach Erik Raeburn conducted by Curtis Peterson over the 2009 summer vaction.
WCU:
With the first season under your belt, what stands out most to you about Wabash tradition?
Coach Raeburn:
“Well, I guess, the thing that really stood out, for me, is Wabash Always Fights. We had several instances during the season where that was evident. Certainly the playoff game against Case [University] you know and the game against Wittenberg. Even the first half of our opening game against Denison [where] they had gone down to score and they cut into the lead and had all the momentum and we got the ball back with less than 30 seconds and got a touchdown. It’s just little moments like that I guess really stuck out for me.”
WCU:
If there is one thing about Wabash that sold you during the interview process, what was it? When you were doing your interview and stuff like that, what was that one thing you saw?
Coach Raeburn:
Well I guess the biggest draw for me was that, you know, everybody associated with Wabash seemed to love football, they’re really passionate about football and proud of the tradition they had and that was a big selling point for me.
WCU:
Where do you feel you fit in, as a coach and as a faculty member, in the Wabash family? What do you feel your role is, besides coaching?
Coach Raeburn:
I don’t really teach classes, so I don’t have as much interaction with the students, outside of our football team. I guess I think everybody’s job at the college essentially boils down to serving the students, you know. For me, the majority of the time, that means the football players because those are the guys I have contact with since I don’t teach any other students. I guess I think, myself and the assistant coaches, our main job is to serve the guys on the football team, and that can mean a variety of things. Helping them get through a tough time, helping them become a better football player, or getting them to push themselves harder than they would of on their own. Teaching them all about those intangibles like work ethic, discipline, commitment and those types of things. I think there are a variety of jobs you do as a coach or a teacher that ultimately boils down to, you’re supposed to serve the students.
WCU:
Wabash was founded as a teaching and seminary college, how close do you feel coaching is to teaching – how big is that link?
Coach Raeburn:
I think coaching is teaching. Our subject is different than chemistry or calculus or something like that, but essentially that is what we try to do. We got to teach them how to be better football players and teach them our system. We have to teach them about work ethic, commitment, discipline and time management, all those other things as well.
WCU:
Speaking about work ethic and such, how much do you think football relates to the rest of life?
Coach Raeburn:
All those things I said, if you got those things from football, they’d serve you pretty well. If you become a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or running your own business, if that’s all you got out of football, that’d be a lot. Just being part of the team, you know, learn how to work with guys that are a little different than you are and that helps you when you go out and get a job, it helps you when you go and get married, if you developed that work ethic and you know what commitment means. I think football has a lot of carry over, in terms of character and things it teaches you.
WCU:
Who has made the biggest impact on your life?
Coach Raeburn:
On me, it would be my uncle. Professionally and personally, and I feel like he is the man that has impacted my life the most. Certainly my mother has made a hugely positive impact, but from a male standpoint, from a professional standpoint, it’s been my uncle. He’s the most successful coach in college football history. Having got to play for him for four years and then coach for him for seven years, you know, I felt like that was a huge advantage for me, professionally, to work for a guy that has done things right and has been so successful. Sometimes I feel like I need to go back there and spend another couple years as an assistant. I definitely believe he has been the guy who has impacted me the most.
WCU:
Just to clarify for our readers, who exactly is your uncle?
Coach Raeburn:
My uncle is the head football coach at Mount Union, Larry Kehres.
WCU:
How important is faith to you and how does it apply to coaching?
Coach Raeburn:
Well I think your faith is important to everybody particularly, I mean all the time, but particularly when you’re faced with tough times. You know, I think the stronger your faith is, and I have a lot of work to do on mine for sure, but I think the stronger your faith maybe the more quick you are to handle the tough spots or rough patches. So I think it’s important. We’re fortunate, Terry Thompson, who’s the pastor at Pleasant View Church, he really gives a lot of his time to kind of serve as our team Chaplin. I know for a fact that he’s helped a ton of our players. You know with different issues that they’ve been facing. I know there’s a lot of guys that feel like they can go and talk to a pastor and confide in him and he’ll keep that between you and him. He’ll help you through it. I know he’s been a huge part for our guys, you know, in terms of helping to strengthen their faith and helping them to get through tough times and deal with different problems that come up, you know, over the course of their time here. He’s been a huge help for me personally, but I think, he’s been a fantastic asset for the guys on our team too.
WCU:
With the future plans to replace the current field with the field turf, do you feel that ruins tradition or tarnishes it in anyway, because that field has been there for a long time?
Coach Raeburn:
I don’t think it affects the tradition. I think, that when people will actually see it. I went through this change at the last school I was at. You know, there are always some people that are the diehards, where hey, you got to get out there in the mud and the wet and the uniform is supposed to be dirty after the games over type of thing. But once its in, it looks so nice, and you don’t hear any complaints once we put it in. With the weather and those type of things, it’s impossible no matter how hard the grounds crew works, you get one rainy Saturday and the field is wiped out for the whole season. I don’t think anyone wants to see the game decided because of the field conditions or that type of thing. And I don’t think it’s very far off, sooner than later, that you won’t be able to host a playoff game if you don’t have field turf or some variation of it. I know one of the schools last year lost a home game because they didn’t have turf. That’s not very far off in the future either. I don’t think that the actually stadium, they’re not planning on making any drastic changes to that. I think everybody will, when they see the new field when that gets done, I think everybody will be pretty pleased how that turns out.
WCU:
How are your relationships with alumni, faculty, and other coaches outside of the football program going right now?
Coach Raeburn:
You know, I feel like in our athletic department, everybody works well together, and is very supportive and wants to see everyone’s program get better. We have several athletes that do football and baseball and football and track. So obviously, because we share athletes, we work pretty closely together with those sports. We have an assistant coach that also assists with baseball and two that assist with track. I don’t feel like our athletic department is, you know, real segregated or anything like that I think everybody gets along real well. And, in terms of the alumni, I definitely believe, of all the places I’ve been, that there the most passionate and supportive group of alums there are. I haven’t met them all yet, but the one’s I’ve met, there’s nothing they want more than for our guys to be successful on the field and then when they graduate. They’ll do anything they can do to help them get on their way, you know, pursuing the career they choose. Every time we’ve asked for some help in recruiting, it’s been one hundred percent that they’ve been willing to chip in and give one of our recruits a call or send them a letter, or both, you know. Or go meet them somewhere or watch them play a basketball game and kind of share with them, you know, how much being at Wabash meant to them and why it would be such a good fit for the individual recruit that we’re trying to convince. In terms of our alumni, its been super positive in the short time that I’ve been here.
WCU:
Speaking of recruiting, is it more difficult, less difficult to recruit at Wabash, does the all guy thing make an impact? I know it does for many potential recruits, not just student athletes.
Coach Raeburn:
I think it’s more difficult, I mean, it’s difficult to recruit any given player, no matter where you’re at. You know, but with the admission standards and the all-male piece, you know, I think it makes it a little bit more difficult. We have to find guys that have outstanding grades or they won’t be able to get into school here or will they be able to stay in school here. Then we have to find a guy that’s mature enough to go to a school where there’s no girls, and when you’re dealing with 17-18 year old guys, that’s a little bit of a challenge too. So yeah, I think it’s a little more difficult, but it doesn’t matter where you’re at, it’s difficult to recruit a good player, it really is. You got to work really hard, you know, to get him. It’s maybe a hair more difficult at Wabash, but it’s tough everywhere to get players recruited.
WCU:
What is your favorite quality about Wabash student-athletes in general, or what is the favorite thing you see from one student-athlete to another?
Coach Raeburn:
The thing I’ve been really impressed with, its really been two things. I thought when I got the job here, and maybe it’s attributable to Coach Creighton or the type of student Wabash attracts, or maybe a combination of both, but I felt the guys had excellent work ethic. No matter what I we ask them to do, they do it. It’s just amazing to me how hard these guys will work just for the chance to get to play. There’s no promises made, but they’re willing to do just about anything, to try and get better so they have just a chance to get to play.
Then the second thing I’ve been most impressed with is, I feel like our guys have a great sense of family, and maybe that’s why the alumni support us so strong is they felt that way too. I don’t know if that’s because Wabash is different than other schools or what. But I feel like the guys are more supportive with each other and a maybe little bit closer to each other than they are at other places. Those have been the two most positive things that I’ve kind of noticed about a Wabash man, if you will.
WCU:
What tips would you have for incoming freshman student-athletes or students in general?
Coach Raeburn:
The biggest thing I see with our players is the time management. I think the admissions office, they’re pretty selective with who they let in the school so if they let you in, that means they think your capable of doing the work it takes to be successful here. The difference is, in high school, you whole day is pretty much mapped out, you know the bell rings and they make you go to study hall, the bell rings you go to this class, the bell rings you go to lunch, they pretty much map out the whole day for you. And then when you go home at night, your parents are there to check up on you and make sure you did your homework before you go out to the movies with your friends or whatever. Then when you go to college, it’s different. You have to build those study halls into your day. You got to set your own schedule up. When you come home at night, you know, mom and dad aren’t there to check to make sure you got your homework done so you have to be disciplined enough to set those priorities and make sure you get your work done before the other fun things that college guys like to do. So to me, our guys that manage their time well do well. The guys that struggle at first, most of time, it was that they got this false sense that they have all this free time when they really don’t. I think the majority of the time that guy’s struggle it’s because they didn’t manage their time well.
WCU:
Do you have any specific tips to help them manage their time well?
Coach Raeburn:
Well, we try to set up all these different things you can do. We have them actually right out a schedule. We’ve done things in the past where we have them chart their whole week. And then show them how much time they’ve actually wasted. I think there are different exercises they can do. The biggest thing for us is we make them do study tables, so they get used to making that part of their schedule. Obviously, that first semester while they’re in football, they’re pretty busy. And I think that helps, oddly enough. With some guys, I think, the more structure or busier they are, the better they do and the less procrastinating they do. Typically, a lot of times, it happens more for us in the second semester with guys who don’t manage their time well when they’re out of season, and they feel like they have more free time. That’s when I worry about their grades dropping a little bit. There’s a variety of things you can do. Eventually, they have to be disciplined enough to set up that schedule. You know, we try to use other players as an example, Brock Graham for instance, who graduated in two and a half year and was an outstanding student. I point out to several freshmen who get on the bus for our first away trip and he is carrying a book bag with homework and things he has to get read. So he’s using the bus trip to get some work done but when most of those freshmen carry a pillow on the bus and an iPod and some DVD’s and their ride was going to be a lot less productive. And you can point out little things like that, where you use older guys as models of what it takes to be really successful here academically. And I think they, particularly after that first year I think they figure it out and see what they did that really worked and what wasn’t as productive and they make those changes and are successful because of it.
WCU:
You had a pretty successful season last year, winning the conference championship, how do you want to build on that success for this season?
Coach Raeburn:
I was real proud, particularly for our seniors, that they were able to finish their career with four straight conference championships and particularly with the coaching change. It’s hard to learn a whole new system when you’re about to be a senior and all those teams we played, they’re senior class has been running the same defense and same offense for four years now and that’s an advantage and a real disadvantage for us. I was very happy that we were able to win the conference championship and that was a great testament to the talent of our seniors but also the leadership of our seniors. We certainly have work to do, our finish to the season was real disappointing. DePauw had a good team, but I certainly knew there was a chance they would beat us, but I guess what I was disappointed in is how we played, I didn’t feel we played anywhere near the level we were capable of. It might not have been enough, but it would have been a little easier to take had we played our best or close to it. And then our last playoff game against Wheaton, I just didn’t feel we didn’t play very well either. Those two games kind of took a little bit of shine off the season, the way things ended; it made it tougher to feel good about all the great things the guys accomplished in that first year. And you know, moving forward, certainly being the first year in our system there’s elements of offense and defense that we didn’t execute well, that we’re hoping with a year under our belt that we will improve those things. We kind of took the approach, coaching staff wise, the week before our first game we went in and I cut out a bunch of things offensively and defensively and said hey we got to get good at this stuff. And we did that, we won ten football games because of it, but for us to be really good, one of the elite teams, we’re going to have to master the whole package. I think that will become easier and easier as we get more and more time in the system. So hopefully that’s something we can build on for next year.
WCU:
It wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t ask this, about the Monon Bell rivalry with DePauw, how healthy is that for an institution and what separates that from other rivalries you’ve seen or been a part of? What is your take on it?
Coach Raeburn:
I think it’s been the best rivalry I’ve been associated with. At Mount Union, as part of our success, there wasn’t a team we had a rivalry with. If you talk to the players, they list one of three different teams about who the rivalry is with depending on the team that was challenging us at that time. We didn’t have anything like this while I was at Mount Union, with a consistent rival who we could say this was the team. At Coe, there was another college who we’d played a hundred and twenty straight years or something like that. But at that time they’d changed conferences and the other conference didn’t allow the game to be played the tenth and final game like it had always been played. You know, when you do that, when the game is always moving around and not the final game, it takes a little bit of the rivalry away, so because of that I don’t think it was quite as intense as the Monon Bell game. The fact that it’s the final game of the season, and we lost this year and that tied up the series, and that’s part of it too, you can’t have a rivalry unless both teams have success. So yeah, I think its an unbelievable rivalry. It’s a great thing for the coaches, but it’s fantastic for the players to play in front of that many people. I’ve coached in the Stagg Bowl, and there’s a big chunk of people who don’t really care who win, they’re just there to watch the national championship game, they don’t have a horse in the race so to speak. So the crowds weren’t as loud as they are for the Bell game, because in the stadium [at the Bell Game] everyone in the crowd is passionate for one of the two teams, and I think it makes the atmosphere even more electric. So I think it’s a great rivalry and I think it’s a great thing to be a part of, particularly for a player.
Related posts:
