'Jacks create their own turnover chain
Courtesy photo The St. Maries turnover chain made its debut during Friday's game at Medical Lake.
Sometimes football coaches need to get a little creative with how to bring a certain energy to practices and games.
Seattle coach Pete Carroll blasts music during Seahawk practices.
Coaches at the University of Miami created the turnover chain.
Even that school down south is in on it as well, Boise State debuting the turnover throne during the Broncos’ 56-20 win over Troy last Saturday.
A LITTLE closer to here, the St. Maries football program is now in on the newest trend as well, debuting its own turnover chain last Friday against Medical Lake.
“Both my assistant coach (Wes Rice) and I are Miami fans,” St. Maries coach Craig Tefft said. “We were laughing about it one day, and said we needed to make a turnover chain for our kids. Wes said he was going to make one and did. We’re having a lot of fun with it.”
The chain has a St. Maries feel to it, with an ax handle on the end of a chain that’s painted gold.
After forcing a turnover, either via interception or recovering a fumble, coaches will put the chain — the size of a necklace — around the player’s neck to wear on the sideline — unless, of course, the player has to turn right around and play on offense, which often happens at smaller schools.
At first, the players didn’t know how to react to the chain.
“I think we’ll get to the point where the kids are excited about it,” Tefft said. “It’s so new to them, they’re just getting used to playing defense and not really thinking about turnovers right now. When we pulled the chain out, they were kind of thinking, ‘What in the world are you doing?’ but you hear guys talking about it. We’re just trying to make football as much fun as we can. We want to make it a memorable experience for them.”
ST. MARIES improved to 2-0 on the season with a 42-20 win at Medical Lake last Friday, outgaining the Cardinals 319-155 in total yards. The Lumberjacks ran for 223 yards and held the Cardinals to minus 9 on the ground.
“We definitely saw some improvement on the offensive line,” Tefft said, “which was obvious with the success we had running the ball. Defensively, we started to see a lot of guys getting better defensively and making the right plays, which is all those things you look for in a second game.”
The Lumberjacks opened the season with a 47-14 win over visiting Kellogg on Aug. 24.
Unlike the opener, St. Maries was able to take advantage of some better conditions to practice in.
“The smoke really messed us up and we didn’t get to do our walkthrough before the Kellogg game,” Tefft said. “We try to treat the walkthrough like a game and just rehearse the game. It was a big help before the Medical Lake game to make sure we had the right guys out there.”
St. Maries returned to school on Tuesday.
“We’d started practicing at 3 during the week of the Kellogg game and onto that school schedule,” Tefft said. “We were trying to get them used to dealing with the heat. We learned our lesson a few years ago, and are more aware of getting the guys into a routine a little earlier.”
Jason Elliott is a sports writer for the Coeur d’Alene Press. He can be reached by telephone at (208) 664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via email at jelliott@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @JECdAPress.