The general institutes boot camp
Patton begins work at Rusk High School
BY JEREME HUBBARD

PHOTO: LELAND ACKER New Rusk Athletic Director/Head Football Coach Ted Patton introduces the Eagles to Leadership Boot Camp, an off-season program designed to build mental toughness. Coach Patton said he wants his players to graduate "better students, better athletes and better people."

New Rusk athletic director and head football coach Ted Patton's passion for success is undeniable.

Although he has barely had time to settle into his new office, Coach Patton has many ideas as to how to help the Rusk Eagles bounce back from their worst season since 2000.

His ideas clearly show his goals stretch much farther than the field of play.

"The very first time I sat down the kids here, I told them that there were three goals I wanted to accomplish here at Rusk," Coach Patton says. "When they leave this program, I want them to be better students, better athletes and better people. When they are forced to make a decision in their lives, I want them to ask themselves whether or not their decision will improve them in any of those areas." As an assistant coach at Arp under former Jacksonville Head Coach Randy Copeland, Coach Patton was introduced to many effective methods of building character and leadership qualities in his athletes. Two of those methods stand out to Coach Patton above the rest, and both will be implemented at Rusk soon.

Breakfast of Champions will take place each Friday morning during football season. All coaches and players will attend, and the players will vote each week on two teachers that they would like to have present. Coach Patton said that many of the parents choose to get involved as well, preparing some of the food for the breakfast. Each week there will be a character lesson, taught by either one of the coaches or by another member of the community. Coach Patton feels that these lessons can go a long way in developing his athletes into better people.

"With these breakfasts, not only do we want to teach a lesson, but we want to tie that lesson to what is going on in their lives. These kids have a lot of different things going on and there are definitely lessons we can teach them that will impact them on a daily basis," Coach Patton says, adding that the other important part of the breakfast each week is the highlight film from the previous game. "It's fun to watch the kids when we show the highlight film. These kids are up early every Friday morning and look forward to seeing the highlight reel. It gets them going and thinking about the game that night."

Long before the first breakfast in September, the players will be introduced to leadership boot camp in May. Leadership boot camp is what Coach Patton feels will build the mental toughness needed on Friday nights.

"The first few days of the boot camp, the athletes will physically be exhausted. They will be not only working out at a high level, but also will be required to memorize the workout routines and will have various other obstacles," says Coach Patton. "After the first few days, they adjust their bodies to the physical part of the workout and it becomes a mental challenge. They are required to have a 'perfect day' to end boot camp, and that consists of many different components testing their physical and mental toughness." A perfect day in boot camp consists of the athletes memorizing the entire workout routine, the athletes having great enthusiasm and giving full effort throughout the entire workout. Athletes are required to respond to coaches with "Yes, sir" or "No, sir" and are urged to encourage their teammates throughout the workout. The workout consists of three dif- ferent stations, each pushing the athletes to go as far as they can physically without quitting.

Coach Patton also uses a method he calls "carrying the load."

"When we first started boot camp (at Elysian Fields) we decided to make one of the requirements for a perfect day be that every athlete had to be present. After a few days we realized that there would almost always be a situation where a kid was out with an illness, or a doctor's appointment or something keeping them from the athletic workout period. So we came up with 'carrying the load', which involves an athlete volunteering to do double the amount of work to make up for his teammate who is not there on that particular day," Coach Patton adds. "It really helps our kids understand that when they don't carry their own load, someone else has to do their work for them." Coach Patton elaborated on this method of teaching by giving an example of how it motivated his team last year in Elysian Fields.

"Kyle Kreigel, who is a University of Texas recruit and who was our best player on defense last year, was injured during pregame of a district game in Arp last year in what was at the time our biggest game of the year. It seemed that everyone at that point just didn't know what to do," Coach Patton continued. "Things just seemed to be going wrong all over the field and so I called the kids together and told them that the next kid in line would have to step up in Kyle's place and get the job done.

"The replacement came in and filled in nicely, and it was mainly because the kids believed that they could carry the load for Kyle."

Although the boot camp is mainly used to build team unity and mental toughness, leadership qualities are grown in athletes because of the motivational methods used by Coach Patton and his staff. "There are three groups in boot camp, a red, black and white group. One group will be the kids we think are the best athletes and the kids who have the best leadership qualities, another will be the kids who are average athletes and leaders, and the last group will consist of the weaker athletes and the kids who we feel are not very good leaders." Coach Patton continued by saying that each day every athlete has an opportunity to move groups, positively or negatively, based on performance. Coach Patton gave an example of an athlete who was motivated by his placement in a group. "Last year our running back accounted for over 2,000 yards of offense, but the first year we did boot camp, he was placed in the bottom group because he lacked leadership skills. He decided he didn't want to be in the bottom group anymore and became not only one of our better players, but one of our leaders."

The athletes in Rusk may be able to draw a lot of knowledge about playing football from Coach Patton, who played college football at Baylor and has coached in a state championship game, but it is obvious that the Eagles will learn a lot more about how to become a better leader on the field and in life from their new head coach.