Naked Football

It was June of 1996. The previous fall, Dick Purdy had won his fifth state title in six seasons at Lawrence High, marking the end of the Lions' 17-year grip on Class 6A football in Kansas. In the coming fall, Olathe North would assume its reign over 6A, winning its first of seven state titles over the next eight seasons, six of them under Gene Weir.

While Weir was on the cusp of ending the state's greatest dynasty in history, other programs in the state were also upping the ante. By November of '96, the pendulum had swung.

That June, twelve prep football teams from western Kansas east to Salina attended Fort Hays State's first-ever team camp. At the camp, high school coaches worked with players on offense and defense in live, controlled football situations against other teams. Bob Cortese, entering his sixth season as coach at Fort Hays State that summer, had decided to bring to Kansas a model of camp he'd been working with in Colorado for decades.

"For 30 years, I had been the co-camp director for the Mile High Football Camp in Colorado," remembers Cortese, who was also a high school and college coach in the state before moving to Hays in 1990. "We were one of the first ones to start a camp for high school players in the mid-70s. There weren't many camps throughout the U.S.

"Every coach that recruited Colorado was there at our first camp. We had 500 kids in Greeley that year."

When the big football universities started holding summer camps of their own for recruiting purposes in the 1980s and 1990s, one characteristic of the Mile High camp remained unique.

"Camps for universities are really tryouts. They work (the players) out, check speed, height and weight, attitude, ability - to me, an individual camp is a tryout for a university.

"During our [Mile High] camps, we had some coaches bring their whole team, even though it wasn't a team camp. They wanted coaching [for themselves and players] from college coaches."

Even though the Mile High camp showcased players for recruiting purposes, Cortese used its evolution into a team camp as the basis for the one he started at Fort Hays State in 1996.

"Fort Hays was not an individual camp. Every coach would bring his team and get extra practice against other schools," explains Cortese, who now writes a weekly column for the Edmond Sun (Okla.). He also color commentates for prep football and basketball games aired on Channel 52 out of Oklahoma City.

"I invited [prep] coaches that I knew from being at Fort Hays, giving them a week to work with players. We could use the dorms for players, and it was closer for them. And being more of a team camp, coaches got to work on stuff they wanted to in the summer, and it was good for the university, because it got players on campus.

"It's beneficial for the high school coach. He's got his team and younger players going against someone with different colors. The offense and defense make adjustments. It's just like spring football, which they don't have in Kansas, right?"

Over a decade later, Cortese's model has been duplicated in Kansas. While the Fort Hays State camp has continued annually, Hutchinson Community College held its second annual team camp in June, and Emporia State also had one. Pittsburg State has conducted its own team camp for several years now, bringing together top programs from Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas over three separate sessions each June.

Four-time state champ Hutchinson, perennial Wichita City League champs Bishop Carroll and Heights, and Salina Central and South, winners of eight 5A state titles since 1993, all attend a summer team camp at a college campus.

The bug is spreading to both smaller schools and bigger schools which are trying to keep up. Wichita North attended at Emporia State this summer, while East travelled to Pittsburg State. Mulvane has gone to Pitt State for several summers now, and Augusta did for the second time this year. Coaches who never previously considered team camps say now they have to.

Why? The use of player equipment, including pads and helmets, is prohibited at their own week-long summer camp. The team camps offered by the colleges, on the other hand, allow coaches to do what they can't at their own camps - grade players in a safe, controlled, live football setting.

"It's hard to teach blocking and tackling without any pads on. You can't simulate a game-like situation without pads and helmets," says Bishop Carroll coach Alan Schuckman. The team camp allows players to perform in situations which would be dangerous at his own pre-season camp without equipment. "We've had kids bonk heads, and it's hard to tell kids to slow down. To me, (the use of helmets at coaches' camps) is a no-brainer for safety issues."

"From a football standpoint, it's different to participate in football as opposed to other sports without the equipment that goes along with it," explains Randy Dreiling, coach at Hutchinson. "How do you teach football technique and footwork with blocking and tackling, when you can't simulate it without pads?

"When a coach is holding a hand shield and a kid is banging into it, his head is going to get hit. A kid knocked out his tooth last year," he says of Hutch's 2007 coach's camp.

"Everything's there for volleyball, basketball and wrestling," Wichita Heights coach Rick Wheeler says about the circumstances of summer camps for other high school sports. "We're the only sport where we don't get to use all the equipment."

So Wheeler takes his players to a camp where they can use equipment. His players have attended a team camp in each of the 10 seasons he has been at Heights, traveling to the University of Tulsa five of the past six summers.

"There are times at camp when one kid goes left and another goes right, or one kid zigs and another zags, and they have head-to-head contact," says Nate Wollenberg, coach at Hesston.

"It's like riding a motorcycle without a helmet," says Wichita Northwest's Weston Schartz.

College team camps, however, offer the closest thing to sanctioned off-season football in Kansas. Eleven teammates setting up against 11 teammates from another school, all in equipment - it's unheard of in our state anywhere, at any other time, outside of the season opener in the fall.

Mark Littrell, who coached his last of 26 seasons at Olathe South this past fall, has been working to change the coach's camp rule since his tenure as president of the state football coaches association six years ago.
"Football is a contact sport," Littrell says bluntly. "When working with linemen, blocking and tackling, you handcuff yourself with what you can do with your kids when you don't have the equipment. It's just something you have to battle with in the state of Kansas.

"My goodness, to me, that's how you play the game. That's how you should be teaching the game."

Thus, the growing appeal of the team camp, where Kansas players are taught the game with a controlled level of contact. And it's perfectly legal in Kansas, according to the Kansas State High School Activities Association Handbook, as long as a team's coach attends as an observer, participant or staff member and not as the organizer.

"The rule permits a coach to work as a clinician on the staff during the camp," says Rick Bowden, assistant executive director of the KSHSAA in charge of football. "Let's say I'm a coach and a college asks me to work with defensive backs at a camp. They have it set up in sessions, and I can work with those kids coming to my session, even if more than 10 percent in the session are from my school - just as long my players don't make up more than 10 percent of the entire camp.

"If that camp is going to have team time, all the students from one school can run drills and plays together, but I can't work with my own students. I can only work with other teams."

Accompanying the growing appeal, however, are coaches who maintain reservations about what goes on at team camps.

"I don't know how many of those coaches are actually (coaching at these camps) legally," says Gary Guzman, coach at Wichita Southeast the past four seasons after spending 14 years at Kapaun. "I bet you could go out to some of these team camps and see coaches coaching their teams, and that's illegal.

"They can make (a coach) a staff member, but you're still not supposed to take your team and coach them. Let's say I'm there working with all defensive backs. Well, there will be some of my kids sprinkled in there, but also some of Hutch's d-backs and Salina Central's. That's legal. I'm a staff member. I can do that.

"Now, I cannot just pull my team over to the side and coach them up. That's illegal. And if you go to these team camps, that's what you'll find."

Coaches who attend the camps say intructing their players in accordance with their own offense and defense isn't their purpose. Three extra days running their own sets doesn't benefit the coaches nearly as much as finding out who is capable at certain positions.

"At team camp, it gives us an opportunity to look at the nuts and bolts and evaluate kids in scrimmage atmospheres," says Mulvane coach Dave Fennewald. "We look at kids in a controlled game situation, especially juniors and sophomores.

"Last year, we answered who would be our quarterback. We didn't want his first snap to be in the first game of the year."

Carroll's Schuckman says his team is going to get to the level at which they need to play in two weeks of fall pre-season practice. Three days in the summer doesn't better implant in their minds team sets and schemes.
"They're going to get to that level anyway," says Schuckman. "I don't think a week of camp in pads is going to make them better.

"The schools [in other states] which are ahead of us are having spring practice or two-week camp."

Formerly, the state's only official recognition in the KSHSAA handbook of the existence of these team camps was in its prohibition of the use of school-owned equipment by players while in attendance at them. As of the fall of 2007, that rule was struck from the handbook.

So how did players formerly participate in contact camps without their equipment from school?
In June 2007, before the rule change, I briefly stopped by the camp put on by Hutchinson Community College to interview Hutch High's Dreiling, who was working as an instructor at the camp.

All the players on the field at Gowans Stadium were dressed in shorts, football jerseys, shoulder pads and helmets. The team on the offensive side of the ball, being schooled by Dreiling, wore brown and yellow jerseys with Broncbusters splayed on the front.

I asked Dreiling which team he was working with. He identified the school wearing the Broncbusters uniforms as Holcomb High.

That confused me, as the Holcomb mascot is the Longhorn, not the Broncbuster, as advertised on the team's jerseys. The explanation: Holcomb, located just west of Garden City, had rented the gear from Garden City Community College for the camp in Hutchinson.

Prohibited from using their own school equipment over the off-season, teams like Holcomb had been forced to rent from colleges for over a decade.

"We were borrowing equipment, wearing seconds and thirds," says Wheeler of the old, used equipment that colleges would check out to players at their summer camps. "I thought that was a huge liability issue. They don't make a better helmet than the Revolution from Riddell," continued Wheeler, alluding to the model of helmet Heights and many other schools own.

"I've been to team camp, and the fitting is really quick, in and out," adds Schartz.
Several coaches tell of camps at which 140-pound players did not fit properly into any of the pads and helmets available. What does a coach do in that situation, when he knows there's perfectly fitting equipment for the player back home at school?

And what of helmet re-conditioning, which Riddell, one the largest providers of football helmets in the nation, recommends on an annual basis? Were the rented helmets up-to-date with re-conditioning - and safe?

Fortunately, these questions no longer have to be answered. In September 2007, the KSHSAA Board of Directors voted to end the prohibition, leaving to each individual school board the decision to allow equipment to be checked out for summer camps.

The Hutchinson school district played a lead role in bringing about the rule change. Over the summer of 2007, Hutch athletic director Eric Armstrong and coach Randy Dreiling met with then district superintendent Wynona Winn to discuss the issue.

"Our stance was, we've got closets full of equipment," says Armstrong. "We know it's safe, we know how often it's been reconditioned, we know it fits our players."

As a superintendent, Winn had the authority to request of KSHSAA Executive Director Gary Musselman that the item be placed on the Board of Directors' agenda in September. And Armstrong, as the Kansas Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association representative on the board, was able to remain close to the issue throughout the process.

"It had been discussed through the KIAAA and through the Kansas Coaches Association and presented to the (KSHSAA) Executive Board," says Armstrong. "We felt strongly that the safety of our kids was being compromised. It was a matter of us getting (the rule change) before the voting body."

Though the rule change had not previously been put on the agenda for a meeting of the Board of Directors, Armstrong says it wasn't a new topic. According to him, board members do not change rules without having discussed them with the school board and district administrators back home.

Though the issue had not officially been brought before the Board of Directors previous to last September, school administrators across the state had discussed it on another front. Over the past decade, the Kansas Football Coaches Assocation has annually put a set of proposals before the KSHSAA Executive Board, one of which has been the allowance of shoulder pads and helmets at the coaches' annual summer camps. (The Executive Board is a group of nine to 12 chosen from the Board of Directors. Items presented to the Executive Board are handed off to Executive Director Musselman who conducts regional administrator meetings statewide in the fall, presenting the items for a vote. He reports the results to the Executive Board, which then votes on whether to put the items before the Board of Directors for an official vote on the issue.)

The coaches association's proposal regarding pads and helmets at their own camps has never made it past the Executive Board. (See Coaches Corner for complete listing of KFBCA proposals.) Based on results from the regional administrator meetings, the board has annually denied allowing the proposal to be put to a vote by the Board of Directors.

Safety could be the central issue which eventually changes the current restrictions on the coaches' camps, just as it was with the team camp rule change.

"In consultation with our legal counsel, we concluded that there is less liability concern for the school with our kids in their own pads [than with a college's pads]," says Leticia Nielsen, president of Bishop Carroll. Nielsen served on the Exective Board this past school year and voted on the Board of Directors when the team camp rule change was made. "When they go through a line with 100 kids at the camp, (the college coaches) are not going to fit them like my coach [at Carroll] will fit them. My coaches know my son's build better than a college coach."

In the years when school equipment was not allowed, the main concern with changing the rule was insurance liability for schools.

"The concern was that schools expose themselves liability-wise if they have safety equipment out beyond the control of the school," says Bowden, outlining the Executive Board's rationale on the issue. "Schools have said that they are concerned about liability exposure insurance for kids. The vote by the Board of Directors now allows schools to make that decision."

The man who got the ball rolling on the rule change, Hutch's Armstrong, says that with the rule change, his school is in a stronger position in terms of insurance liability.

"We felt it was in the best interest of our athletes and safer for kids to be in helmets they're going to wear for four years in high school," Armstrong explains.

His football coach, Dreiling, has doubted the viability of the liability argument throughout the conversation over the issue.

"We as coaches are liable for what our school's players are doing no matter what," says Dreiling. "It's year-round we're liable. You're going to get fired if you're not doing a great job keeping your kids safe."
Armstrong believes that the use of at least helmets at the coaches' week-long summer camps will give schools a stronger position liability-wise, as well.

"Say you're in court, and you've got a kid who was running a crossing route without a helmet and breaks up his face and needs reconstructive surgery," says Armstrong. "His lawyer's going to say, 'He was playing football without a helmet on.'

"That's what I said at the Board of Directors meeting. How do we defend that?"

The particulars of rules changes aside, the trend toward increased practice time over the off-season concerns other Kansas coaches and administrators. One of the original rationales behind prohibiting off-season football practice in Kansas was to benefit coaches who wanted time off over the summer. As times have changed and coaches and players have become more entrenched in their sports, a rub between old and new school has emerged.

Garden Plain coach Todd Puetz, who hasn't lacked success with his philosophy (going to three state title games in seven seasons), tells his players to take the summer off outside of weightlifting.

"The summer is nine weeks long," says Puetz. "I like for them to get away and do their thing.

"I don't want my kids to get burned out. They need variety rather than doing the same thing over and over."
Doug Carr, athletic director at Andover Central, speaks directly concerning the debate over the conditions of off-season football in Kansas.

"This gets down to keeping up with the Joneses, the Texases and Oklahomas," says Carr. Both Texas and Oklahoma, in addition to Arkansas, allow two to three weeks of spring football practice. Kansas neighbors Missouri and Colorado allow two weeks of summer practice in helmets and pads.

"I'm sure we'll eventually get asked about spring football five years down the line," continues Carr. "How many high schools are actually taking their teams to Pittsburg State or Fort Hays State [for the team camps]? How many are actually going? That would be a good question to find out.

"We've now - between MAYB, Legion, seven on seven - put a great demand on the kids. They get no summer anymore. The pressure is more than it used to be. Kids can't be kids anymore."

Carr feels increased off-season football practice is part of a growing movement toward sports taking over families' lives.

"Do we want families to have vacations? Do we want kids to have time off?"

In regard to the team camp rule change, Armstrong says that the process worked. The majority got what it wanted.

"The important part of this is that it's up to each school board to decide whether they want to (give out equipment). There was no fight - there was a process, and the process worked.

"I was able to plead the case to 75 people, and they had to vote," Armstrong notes in reference to the September Board of Directors meeting at which the rule was changed. "Maybe it was the right time. There's nothing to say that someone presents the other way next year, and gets it reversed."

For a Kansas football fan's perspective on what exactly takes place at one team football camp, go to VYPE.com. Also, Tom Witherspoon offers a plan for re-constructing off-season football in the state of Kansas, addressing the landscape in terms of both the college team camps and the coaches' camps.