Kings Football » Coach Olds Corner

Location can make for a key factor in creating a great rivalry.  In Friday’s case Loveland High School is less than 5 miles from Kings. Our districts border each other. We even have several players on our team with Loveland zip codes! When this factor is present, it is common for players to literally grow up competing against each other in every sport imaginable. In some cases, these rivals at some point were team mates during their childhood years. Regardless the case, a “rivalry” exists between Kings and Loveland. Rivalries such as this can bring out the good, the bad, and the ugly.

On Friday night, this game hit all three facets! In fact, I would go as far to say that the good was “great” in the first half for our offense as well as for our defense. We had the ball three times and hit pay dirt all three times. We converted third and fourth down tries. The kids simply made plays. We had no penalties to slow us down. We managed the clock as well as a team could do! And when the horn sounded to end the first half, the scoreboard would show Kings 21, Loveland 0. I can’t recall the halftime stats but I am pretty sure it was very lopsided. Westbrook and the offensive line went for well over 100 yards rushing in the first half while Loveland’s offense never posed a threat. The defense that had a reputation for playing fast, hitting hard, and swarm tackling even raised their play to a new level. Collectively, they filled the highlight reel with several plays in the first half alone. And then there was the second half. Since we won the toss, we elected to defer. This would mean that we would receive the kickoff to open up the second half. Offensively, we started off with 2 penalties that would eventually move us deep into our own territory. We would give up a safety with a botched snap in the end zone. As we played poorly on offense, this would pump life into the Tigers. As Loveland began to sense the opportunity to turn the tide, it was very evident that Kings’ defense would not cooperate and simply would match the Tigers intensity and will to mount a comeback. This is when Loveland became very frustrated and then the ugly side of the rivalry showed itself. Both sides would accumulate personal fouls as both teams would get “chippy”. At one point, the head official called both captains to midfield and gave both teams an “official” verbal warning. From that point, both teams seemed to go from “boiling point” back down to what I would consider a “simmer”. When the final horn sounded, the score would read 28-2.

Both teams shook hands and as did the coaching staffs at the conclusion. In the end, a hard fought game was played by both teams and their efforts did not disappoint anyone. And when next season rolls around, you can bet that the players will be ready to write the next chapter as this “backyard rivalry” continues!

See you on the field,

Coach Olds

GO KNIGHTS!!!

Nights like this simply do not come too often in a coach’s career, not to mention a senior football player’s career! On this night, life was literally a stage for Kings Football and our entire District. This was the second game broadcasted on FOX Sports Ohio in as many years. Last year’s thriller against Glen Este was deemed an “instant classic” by the thousands that watched across the country. Although this past Thursdays game against visiting Harrison was not quite as exciting, it was still packed full of very, very good high school football moments!

The most dominating story of this evening would be that of the Knight’s defensive effort. Harrison had a total of -3 yards at the half….yes, -3! On the night, the visiting Wildcats were held to just 3 yards of rushing and 98 yards through the air with 64 of those in one play! Collectively, it was one of the top five defensive efforts I have seen since 1990! Defensive Coordinator Chad Seymour and the rest of his coaches were dialed in on this night and their efforts were on display for many to see!

Offensively we seemed to sputter at times but when the dust settled, they had rung the score board up for 30 points while churning up just over 500 yards in offense! Senior running back Brian Huffman ran for a career high 120 yards while Senior Jamire Westbrook went over the 4000 yard career rushing mark as he ran for over 200 yards on this very night. Needless to say, the Wolf pack was on the prowl and certainly made their presence know as they controlled the line of scrimmage on the majority of snaps.

Lastly, place kicker Evan Berg seemed to enjoy the spotlight as well as he had three field goals on this night and was perfect with his P.A.T.s. Evan also hit his career long field goal with a 47 yarder!

This was a wonderful night for all of us from the Kings Community to celebrate not only a football game but to recognize and honor all that are a part of the Kings Local School District!

See you on the field!

Coach Olds

GO KNIGHTS!!!

As kick off approached, the on field temps would be as high as 95 degrees! Since we were at Milford, we played on a grass surface. Had we been at Kings, the surface temp would have easily been over 100 degrees at game time. The second hurdle to overcome on this night would not be weather related but “frame of mind” related. Last week, the Knights dominated a good Lebanon team by a score of 42-13. As most all sport enthusiasts know the challenge coming off such a great win is the preverbal “let down”. This turned out to be wishful thinking for the Milford Eagles. As the dust settled at the half, the visiting Knights lit the scoreboard up for 35 points!

In last week’s win over Lebanon, Kings coach’s set their sights on improving on the kick coverage team and to reduce penalties. Kings committed just over 100 yards in laundry a week ago. Against Milford, both areas improved greatly! Milford had only one return get beyond the 30 and the penalties for the evening were cut more than in half!

It is really difficult to single out anyone player or group. This win was truly a “TEAM” effort across the board-Offense, Defense, and Special Teams all shined on this warm evening. Do we have things to work on? You bet we do!! Most importantly, the players know and believe they have plenty to work on!

I did get to witness a wonderful thing on this night. Our German exchange student, Lennart Boysen, would get to play in his first American football game. With just over 3 minutes left, Lennart’s kicking services were called upon to split the uprights from 32 yards out and he did just that. As the shock of him being asked to attempt a the kick wore off, he booted his first field goal! As the sideling erupted along with our student body and fans, he did not have much time to celebrate as his services were once again needed to kick off! As Lennart broke the huddle and realized it was time to kick off, he approached the ball and launched it to the 1 yard line in fine fashion with the kick being very high!

As Milford returned the kick up their sidelines, Lennart recorded his first tackle as he knocked the returner out of bounds! This was a series of events that not many players and fans will soon forget!

Lastly, a huge thanks to our trainer Jamie and her wonder staff for keeping everyone cool and hydrated  throughout the duration of the game!

Be sure to join us Thursday night as we take on Harrison on FOX Sports Ohio @ Kings as our home opener! Game time-7:00 pm!

See you on the field!

Coach Olds

GO KNIGHTS!!!

The visiting Kings Knights took home the 1^st Annual Outback Boomerang Bowl trophy Friday night by a score of 42-13. As expected, Lebanon’s Vandegrift stadium was filled to its’ capacity as both schools were well represented by their respected communities. Both student bodies competed off the field by collecting money for backpacks for needy students. But on this night, the competition on the football field would take center stage. The Knights, wearing their new Munoz Brandz away whites, struck pay dirt in the first quarter and would never look back. They would take a 28-13 lead to the locker room at halftime behind a pick 6 by Junior Justin Crull with less than one minute remaining that all but sealed the fate of the home team. The entire team accepted the pre game challenge to “empty their tank” by the end of the first half and then “refuel” for the second half of the game. Although the offense sputtered a little coming out of the locker room, the defense certainly picked up the slack. In fact, Lebanon was not only shut out the second half, they did not convert 1 first down! While the defense dominated, the offense soon got in the act as the Knights running game churned up almost 300 yards behind great efforts of running backs Nick Collado, Jamire Westbrook, and an aggressive offensive line.

Collectively, both sides of the ball had moments that looked as if they picked up where they left off from last year’s 11-2 season. But like in most cases, Saturday morning film review has a way of humbling even the best of performers. Without question, “a win is a win” and we all are certainly thankful for the victory, coaches included. But this year’s team had decided even prior to 2 a days that the goal was to be a great team, not just a good team. When this standard is self imposed, the players gladly take the criticism and challenge to elevate their play despite winning by a score of 42-13 the night before.

The biggest challenge will be to reduce penalties. On this night, despite winning by the margin that we did, as a team, we had just over 100 yards in penalties. As most of you know, this is not acceptable for any good team, not to mention a team striving to be great.

As the first Coaches Corner concludes, a well deserved “congratulations” goes out to our senior class of football players as they accomplished what only 50% of all seniors dream of doing-winning their opening game as a senior football player!

See you on the field,

Coach Olds

GO KNIGHTS!!!

Last week’s Annual All Star festivities once again proved that Kings Local knows how to put on a “first class” event! The week really started with Rob Patterson and the “Tag-it” company as he once again donated locker tags for both coaches and players for both teams! This tradition is just one of many that make the Southwest Football Coaches Association decision very easy to choose Kings High School as the “Home Site” for future All Star events!

Another tradition unique to Kings is the annual Team Cookout during Media day. This is sponsored in large by John Morrell Meats but more importantly, some of our Team Moms pour their heart and soul into this event knowing the memories that they help create for the players as well as coaching staffs. These moms include Terri Cook, Candy Anthony, Tina Rice, Kim Mathias, Kim Carlin, and Janine Phelen. And at the end of the night, the All Stars were treated to custom Cupcakes by Katie Gebhardt and Lisa Crull’s amazing brownies!

 On Thursday, “game day”, was simply an amazing display of “teamwork”! We had the ticket takers and booths headed up by Bob Olds, Parking headed up by Dan Weed, Concessions headed by my Tina and Bill Rice, and DVD sales by Terri and Kelcey Cook. Our own Bob Hinman did his usual awesome job with announcing the game while Ro Collado filled in at score keeper on this night! We even called on Southwest Ohio’s finest “stat man” Dave Stubenrauch and his faithful assistant (and son) Noah! Our long standing videographer Eric Berg captured all of this excellent game on DVD! We had the usual Kings chain gang consisting of Tim McCarty, Brian and Jason Kidder. We also had over 75 football players from Kings along with our entire staff selling water, programs, and t- shirts!

Lastly, a huge “thank you” goes out to King’s maintenance consisting of Mark Bailey, Steve Leuzinger, and Tim Byrd. Not only did this crew clean up after the event, they were the ones responsible for getting the entire facility to “tip top” shape!

Without question I sure have missed a few people but I thought I should at least take a stab and mention as many as I could possibly remember! Once again, the parents of our football players, coaches and various Kings Staff have come through in a HUGE way! On this night, I was certainly very, very proud to be the head Coach of the Knights!

See you on the field…..soon!

Andy Olds

Head Football Coach

Kings High School

I knew the day would come when coaches in my Junior High Program would eventually be ready to step down and give another person a chance to experience the joys of coaching. This fall season, we will try to replace over 50 years of coaching experience between Coaches Rodney Bedinghaus, Steve France, Bill Frambes, and Rick Jestice. I will remind these guys at least once per year that you can “unretire” anytime and come back!! In Coach Jestice’s case, he will no doubt be back the following  season! He is serving our Country in the Army Reserves as he serves a 1 year deployment in Utah. It would not surprise me to see any of the three others return to coaching football at Kings in the near future.  These men have all been invaluable to the development of our Football players and we will miss having them on the sidelines.

Regarding the transition, I continue to be the most blessed coach in Ohio. For 2011, Coach John Karabinus is as excited about this coaching opportunity as he was when he was my Assistant Head Coach (for 10 years) at the varsity level and preparing to do battle with rival Loveland (at least pretty close!)! He is coming fresh off a dream season coaching the Varsity Lady Knights Basketball team to the 2011 FAVC Championship!  Coach K will be joined by Coach Matt Knott who currently teaches Science at our JH and is the Men’s JV Basketball Coach. Coach Knott was Coach K’s first “draft choice” when the search began! Also new to Coach K’s staff is Coach Al Walsh. Coach Walsh has been the long time Head Coach of Milford’s JH program as this is where he went to school back in the day. We are thankful he is leaving the “dark side” to join the Knights program. The third assistant coach will likely be Coach Trent Olds. He is my nephew and will be doing his student teaching at Kings HS in the fall. Trent played at Muskingum and served as a graduate assistant for the Muskies Football program!

I have asked these coaches to comment on their experience while coaching at Kings.

“Coaching football has taught me patience and endurance.  I enjoy the camaraderie with the players and parents and I will miss having that special bond outside of the school day!  I do have to say I will never forget watching the class of 2012 (next years’ seniors) come together as a team.  The improvement that class made from 6^th to 7^th to 8^th grade was something special.” recalls Coach Steve France.

Looking back on a very successful career, Coach B reminisced, “I really enjoyed watching the kids grow overtime. Football is a hard sport to play and I loved watching kids transform from little kids in 7^th grade to young men by the time they leave the 8^th grade. I will miss the everyday interactions with the coaches and players.”

Coaches are hired to guide and lead young people into not only their next phase of football, but most importantly, their next phase in life.  Through this very process coaches get to experience some wonderful and “special moments” unique to coaches.  I’m sure all four of these coaches would agree that their lives have been enriched by these experiences they have had with our young Knights players and Coaching staff.

See you on the field,

Coach Olds

For the first time in 13 games, we found ourselves in a very odd place at halftime of the regional final against Trotwood Madison, we went to the room behind by a score of 25-10!  It was certainly not a place you’d want to get use to being.

Our 2009 team certainly did that enough to last us for several season! Even though we were down at the half, I really felt we still had a chance to make it a good and competitive game. I told the guys I felt we could score 3 more times.

But I also told them I was not sure if we could keep them out of the end zone the rest of the night either! I also shared with them that on this night, our best defense would be our ability on offense to keep the ball away from them. As you probably know, we did not make it to 31 and we did not hold them to 25. They were a very good football team and we are expecting them to make it to the final game in Massillon.

I would like to close out this final edition of “Coaches Corner” talking about our senior class. As I told them after the game at Princeton, their class started with many more guys than the 10 we finished with.  As the old cliche’ goes, “those who stay will be Champions” never rang truer than on this night.

Every since this class started to play in youth ball, they really have not won anything of any significance. When these seniors were Sophomores, a couple of them played and helped us earn a FAVC Championship as well as go to the second round of the playoffs.   But as senior leaders and only numbering 10, their leadership would be a concern that our staff had going into the off season.  It took about one month, the month of January to be exact, we certainly recognized the signs of real leadership developing in the weight room.

As soon as basketball ended, our opinions were reinforced with the arrival of those football players jumping into the weight room as well.

This lead us from spring and into the early part of summer. As school released for summer break, our kids grades, attitudes, desire and choices made outside of football was very, very evident that the seniors wanted to leave a legacy of that of a championship team! When I met with the seniors to set the TEAM goals for the upcoming season, I was both surprised and nervous at the same time. After much discussion and a lot of pizza, the seniors focused on three goals (in no order of preference).

They were as follows:

1. Go Undefeated

2. Committed 24/7

3. Win FAVC

Keep in mind that these goals were the kids senior’s goals and not the head coaches goals! We spent the most time discussing the “committed 24/7″ goal. I asked them to tell me what they thought it meant. Each senior shared their opinions and expectations of exactly what this would take to keep this goal. Once we discussed it, I told them that this could be one of the most powerful goals ever put on paper or it could be one of the most destructive goals ever! Once again, I asked them if they wanted to reconsider choosing this particular goal and that it would be “ok” to pick another. At this point, they looked at this more as a challenge to one another rather than a TEAM goal.

As Paul Harvey would say, “and now for the rest of the story”. This senior lead squad would go onto to win the FAVC, finish in the city poll, 10th in the A.P. State poll, place a school record 15 players on the all conference team, a record number of all SWOFCA players, and would submit a TEAM G.P.A. of 3.67 to the State Coaches Association!

For only the third time in the school’s history, their football team would be only 1 of 8 teams left in the playoffs throughout the entire state of Ohio!

Yes, these seniors who only number 10 will be missed very, very much. Their legacy will be their choice to lead a team while being committed 24/7 to each other, to the football program, and to their parents!

See you on the field in 2011!

Coach Olds

GO KNIGHTS!!!

p.s. Once a Knight, Always a Knight!!!

What an exciting year this has been! Going from 3 & 7 to this point in the season has been a year full of life lessons!  I am very proud of our players as well as coaches.  The players continue to practice with passion knowing that what is sacrificed throughout the week will only better their chances of success on Friday nights. the coaching staff continues to pour in countless hours of film study and game preparation that cannot go unnoticed by anyone including the players themselves!

This trip to the regional final makes number three for this program as well as many of the current staff members.  Our first trip was against eventual state champ Dayton C.J.   That was a very wet night in which we played with them every step of the way!   The following year we took on Edgewood and got beat in convincing fashion.

This year’s team is very, very similar to the 2002 team that lost to C.J.  But what comes from these experiences without question is that as a staff, it has taught us how to navigate the emotional as well as physical expectations that come with such a game.  The challenge which lies ahead for all of us could be convincing our guys they are good enough to win this game.  With this group of guys, I believe that most of them have the confidence it takes to win this region.  The undeniable factor is that we get better at something each and every week we practice.  And when our players can honestly acknowledge and understand that fact, it only breeds confidence amongst the troops!

Since the game will be at Princeton, we will have to turn that into a home game for the Knights.  Since we are the higher seed, we will get the home side, get our red tops with white bottoms, and hopefully will use the larger side of the bleachers to fill not only with Kings fans but with football fans from all over Southwest Ohio!!!

See you on the field!!!

Only half of the seniors who play high school football get the chance to play on their home field for their last football game.  Only half of that number will end it with a win!

Now think about this.  Only 32 teams get selected to play in the post season for division 2.  16 of those teams will get to play on their home field for their last game as well.   And only 8 of the 16 will finish their careers with a win!  On this cold and frigid evening, the Kings seniors were given a special gift that will never lose it’s luster-a 55-30 victory over the Arrows of Tecumseh High School.

Did I mention that it was snowing at one point? I definately won’t for get that nor will I forget the ice water bath I received at the end of the game with the temperature hovering right around the 30 degree mark!!!!

The Knights closed down the Castle with a win in convincing fashion over an 7-3  Tecumseh.   We also set a new Kings scoring record for the playoffs by reaching 55 points.   At just under 9 minutes to go in the fourth quarter, the score read 41-6.   At this point, I decided the game was out of reach and that it would be in our best interest to let our younger guys finish out the game.

The visitors had other ideas!   They choose to leave in their starters.   Not unusual but after they scored, they attempted and recovered the first of many onside kick attempts.   With about 5 minutes remaining and my blood pressure on the rise, I decided to put our starters back in the game.

We went on to score 14 points with a long screen play from Gebhardt to Lewis and Justin Crull recorded his second interception on the night (7 for the season) and returned it 74 yards to give us 55 on the night.   With less than two minutes to play, the Arrows still used all three timeouts while their offense continued to attempt to score more points.

With the win, we advance to round two where we will cross paths once again with Mt. Healthy who we scrimmaged earlier in the year.  Again our offense continues to improve while our defense learns to play even faster than ever!  The game will be played at Mason’s spacious stadium and for a first in my career, I’ll be coaching from the home sideline of the Comets after spendingnumerous games on the visitors sideline!

Be sure to purchase that pre-sale ticket prior to Friday at noon!  Last week we sold a record 800 + pre-sale tickets! Lets break that record again!!!

See you on the field!

Andy Olds

Head Football Coach

Kings High School

513-398-8050 ext. 12021

GO KNIGHTS!!