With the Emporia High School football team practicing just a few football fields away in preparation for the 2006 season, Mike Schoenberger was busy conducting a practice of his own Wednesday afternoon.
Schoenberger is the head football coach at Emporia Middle School, and it’s only natural that his squad practices in the proverbial shadow of the the high school team, since the middle school uses the same plays, formations and calls as their Spartan counterparts just a few hundred yards away.
“We actually base all our systems on what the high school is doing,” Emporia Middle School athletic director Brian Pekarek said. “Our football system this year is more in line with what coach (Bill) Lowe is doing at the high school than it has ever been. That way, the kids are getting exposed to that even earlier.”
But the parallels don’t stop there.
One of Wednesday’s highlights for the EMS football hat the players made the trek over to the high school fields to use the EHS tackling sleds to practice hitting in pads.
“I think the kids loved that,” Shoenberger said.
Shoenberger’s football team and coach Joann McRell’s volleyball squad are the two fall sports in which Emporia Middle School competes in at the varsity level, though EMS also has an extensive intramural sports program.
Pekarek said sports at the middle school level are important because the coaches get to mold young athletes for the first time in a competitive school-to-school environment.
“It’s really fun because you can see the kids’ excitement for the sport, and you can see that grow. You can see that your coaches are really excited about teaching the sport as well,” Pekarek said. “It’s different from the high school level. At the middle school level, my coaches tell me that they’re excited because they can tell the kids something and the kids actually do it.”
While the numbers for the EMS football team have dipped this year — 35 players are on the squad; down from 50 a year ago — Shoenberger believes his squad can be better than its 4-2 record from a year ago, especially with a first-ever seven–game schedule that opens with Manhattan-Eisenhower.
“All 35 kids want to be out here playing football,” he said. “I don’t want to predict anything...but I’m hopeful we’ll do well this year.”
The EMS volleyball program, under McRell’s guidance, could be in for a big year because, as McRell puts it, “we have some height and we have some power, which is awesome.”
“I have a pretty talented bunch,” McRell added. “With the girls we have and the size we have, that will give us an advantage at the net.”
McRell, like Shoenberger, cherishes the opportunity to be the first coach most of the young athletes come in contact with.
That’s why McRell says she tries to keep the sport of volleyball fun for the girls, but also tries to teach it correctly.
“Honestly, most of these girls haven’t played before,” she said. “This is a basketball town, so their first experience with volleyball has to be a positive one. We’re teaching them all the skills, so I really hammer on correct form and we work on progression of skills a lot. Hopefully, by the time they get up to high school, they don’t have to fix the kids’ form.”
Schoenberger said if nothing else, he lives for the chance to work with young athletes that are just beginning their competitive athletic careers.
“I definitely love teaching and working with the kids,” he said. “At this level, they listen to you and they’ve got enough skills that you can really teach them. You get a chance to pass on what you know, and then you get to see them use what you’ve taught them.”
Pekarek said he views middle school athletics as a way to positively influence a young student-athlete’s world before they make the jump into the often pressure-filled situations that high school sports hold.
“I guess it’s more important to connect with kids,” he said. “That is so vitally important. We have sports not for having sports sake, but we have sports because for a lot of our kids, that’s the carrot that really brings them in and gets them motivated.
“That’s how we can touch some lives.”