1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - Barry Thompson (Fairfax Football Academy): April 28th, 10am

Episode Date: April 28, 2022

Being a coach means not only helping your athletes reach their athletic goals but the goals of becoming the people they aspire to be in the futureYou become a product of what your coaches are/how they treat youAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It's time to go one-on-one with D.P. Coming at you live from the Coppull Chevrolet GMC Studios, here is your host, Derek Pearson, presented by Beatrice Bakery, on 93-7 The Ticket and the Ticketfm.com. Let's get after it. It's Thursday, and we have some really cool stuff happening. Again, the folks from Heavenly Waffles have been here. They've taken care of it this morning.

I want to thank them. Just go to heavenlywaffles.com. Good stuff. This hour brought to you by Beatrice Bakery. I want to thank them for what they do for us to bring us this hour of radio. And then we have added value. We have added value. So when you bring in the coach, there's only one way to do so.

4246-5-6-85. If you want to add questions to it, add commentary, please do. But he's on the Honda-Lincoln hotline, and you can check it out on the Sardhaman video stream, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch. So let's get ready. Let's set the tone. Here we go.

The autumn wind is a pirate. Blustering in from sea with a rollicking song he sweeps along, swaggering boisterously. His face is weather-beaten. He wears a hooded sash. with a silver hat about his head and a bristling black mustache. He growls as he storms the country, a villain big and bold.

And the trees all shake and quiver and quake as he robs them of their gold. The autumn win is a raider, pillaging just for fun. He'll knock you round and upside down and laugh when he's conquered and won. That is our leaded to the coach. Perfect football. What up? Barry Thompson. Coach, how are you doing this morning, sir?

I'm doing great, man. We've got off the football field with what we're going to call the Oakmar Breakfast Club. Okay. I think some of them are listening in and just had a great morning workout and ready to rock and roll about some football coaching and food. That has been the theme this morning. everybody here has a full tummy. We're going to send you this kit of heavenly waffles. And Barry, brough, wow, wow, is all I'm going to tell you.

Look, a choro waffle, a waffle with unduey sausage and grits. Another one that's cornbread with like the chocolate raspberry glaze. yeah he came in here and set it on fire and set it on fire well you had me at Teresa so I'm good oh it is this kit and all that's required he's got a full kit put together and all that's required is like carbonated water

or beverage so you can do it with beer champagne yeah whatever you want to whatever you want to make it with and it is ridiculous perfect texture like you can put sauce on it and it stays crunchy and then light. Like you could eat three of them and not feel theitis. That's great. Right.

I caught the tail end of it. It seemed like everybody was happy and full right before we got on here. Bro, everybody here. I mean, you got the big folks in here and they are all happy. We do have some news to share. Okay. I have to share this with you and let you guys know that officially, going forward, this hour of radio each week Thursdays

will be brought to you by Ambition Electric that the folks from Ambition Electric Joe Davis and company thought so highly of Barry Thompson and what he offers from week to week that they wanted to sponsor this segment this hour and so Barry Thompson you are official you are absolutely official you've always been bona fide but now you're official

you have a sponsor so now we can actually pay you for doing this This is actually pretty cool. Well, big shout out to Ambition Electric, and thanks, and I hope I do them proud. Well, you already have. The work's been done. How you carry it and how you present it. They're aware. They're good folks.

They're like-minded folks, like-hearted folks, and it's good to be able to do this. So I was thrilled. I was trying to keep the secret from him, so I was like, okay, I don't want to tell him until we go live. Right. Like I wanted to tell you, but I was like, no, let's wait. Let's wait until we're live on air. So it's the busy time of year, and there's so much stuff going on. You and I have been in similar circle space and otherwise for most of our lives, from 16, 17 to now.

And our journey as student athletes, friends, husband, dads, et cetera, have taken us to common ground and we've met ourselves in common space. And one of the places that we had been, we were a high school coach, and where we were assistants, it wasn't our program, but we were assistants. And I think it's fair to say that we went through a situation that's very similar to what's happening now, national. where student athletes, the pressures, the stresses, the drama, the access, the lack of mission and purpose is affecting student athletes. And you and I were at a place where it hit a high school in Virginia pretty hard. Yeah. And correct me if I'm wrong, but there were three of these situations and scenarios in like two years, right? Is that?

Just within that school and then the surrounding schools, there were a few more. But yes, exactly. Right. So in that space, you and I made a decision. Like, we made a decision that we had to do something in that space to change that. Right? To at least give student athletes a place where love was welcome, that love was apparent, love was loud,

that we decided that along with helping them achieve the things they wanted to athletically, that we had to help them achieve becoming the kind of person they wanted to be, that they were proud of being. Right. So.

Well, D.P. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I mean to catch you. No, no, no. Go ahead. Because I think this is the conversation needs to be had. Well, it's so funny. I labeled this. I was with a group of young men this morning. They're buddy pre-agents, and they're working their way through the circuit, and all of them have a good chance that you catch you on and getting into some type of camp.

And so I had a feeling we might be talking about this. And I sat there and asked them what was going on. And they just, I mean, it was like they couldn't wait for somebody to ask them that question. And out of the conversation, I got a couple of things. And it will be no surprise to you. Because as no one of the conversations that I had with them with theme was, one of the ballplayers said that it took him a while for him to realize that he was more than just a football player,

something we have always kind of advocated to any player that we come in contact with. When we see there, and there are time to remember that they're not just a football player and not just a basketball player. So that guy had to kind of struggle to find his own answer, and he didn't have the support system around him to let him know that, that you're more than just a football player, especially what I got from these guys is when things get tough. You know, you enter a program, you're recruiting,

you want to be a division to, you know, college athlete, and you're there, and all of a sudden, you're introduced to this what I call the real ground. you're just the fourth person of, you know, four. And you've got to begin to figure out, okay, how and when is my time going to come? And you really don't understand. You don't know what there's light at the end of the tunnel, but you have to go through all of this stuff.

And there's no support system to thought, you know, hey, as you're struggling to do this, remember, you're more than just a football player. I've always thought that the very best thing about football, the very best thing about football is that it's never, ever just about football. I always thought that was the best thing. And so in this one case, he's telling me that he kind of had to get to that discovery on his own. Another of the athletes said that, you know, because I asked the question, you know, do you think that with the pressure to win,

could there be a coach who could coach in such a way that you understand, that he cared about you, but he still was pursuing winning. And one of the players said that he thought that that was essentially too much. Because of the pressure to win, what they needed was a mental health department, somewhere where a player could go, which led me to, I said, well, can't you talk to your position coach? And he goes, no, I can't talk to my position coach like that. Right.

But he said, and he was one of my quarterbacks saying, talk to you like that, and you were my outlet. But if I didn't have that, there was nothing on campus for me to go to. The other thing that came up about this is just that, you know, because I always thought, you know, the head coach plays that role in your position coach as a guy. And now these guys are telling me they're at different levels. There's two, you know, FCS, you know, there are different levels. And they're kind of relating the same stories that, um,

that this idea that when they're having a tough time, there's not an outlet for them to go express themselves or to talk to. So either they have to find these answers on their own, right, find their success form on their own if they're lucky, or it tilts the other way. One of the ballplayers said he, for him, it was still that same thought that I'm more than just a football player. Football isn't what makes me happy.

Everything else in my life makes me happy. And when I'm happy, I enjoy going to play football, right? And you think about that mindset, how he got to that point. That's not normally how a coach with that, right? Or if you express that to a coach at a Division I, he's kind of like, okay, you know, he's not at bed and maybe move on. The other thing, we talked about this a lot,

is the men that are coaching these guys, even one of the players related to me a circumstance, and I was trying not to out this person, but he related to me of circumstances, Even as a young man in college, this guy's wife and son were in another state. And this coach is coaching in four or five states away. And even he has a young man looking at it. Like, how are you not with your family?

Right. And, you know, that guy, he knew was doing everything he could to get out of that situation to get to a better one. That's a weird dynamic, right? you're being coached by somebody who all he wants to do is to get out of that situation. So there are a lot of cross-current from talking to these guys. But at the bottom, I think a lot of it can be thick if, one, all the schools have support departments for these players. Right?

They have some type of outlet where they can go and talk to somebody because they evidently can't talk to their position coaches. Right? And then they're so deep. There's so much depth to all of it, so to unpack all that. First of all, you and I like to say the one thing constant about young student athletes or young people in general is that they can't wait to tell you who they are. Yeah. They're just waiting for you to ask. Yep.

Yeah. No, and it's small things. You know, I've heard about programs, for instance, let's just talk. about the players that are in the back end of the roster, right? They're not the starters, and at the division one level, you've got to win and do all the stuff. There's a way to pursue winning. But, you know, how do you handle the back end of that roster?

If a coach, if you're aware enough that these guys are going to every single meeting, right, and they're doing everything you require them, and they're not getting any reward, you know, why can't you set up a reward for them? A while ago at Texas A&M, the coach had a, I forget what they called it, but it was typically on their Thursday. It was all the guys, it was all the guys that didn't play. They had like a game. They had a game.

So the starters and everything else, the guys were traveling, right? They would stay. Music would be on. They had an announcer. I think they did some streaming, but they certainly let all the parents know, hey, your son will be playing this day. And it was a big thing for the team, right? that everybody got a little bit of sugar.

And that's kind of coaching in a way that you realize or acknowledge, right, what you're saying. Hey, I know that you're here. I can see you. I appreciate what you're doing. It sounds so simple. But, you know, talking to the players, it's just not done as much. You know, you and I have talked a lot about the success in coaching is really coaching from the back end of your roster, right? If you can get the back end of your roster to accept standards and do things,

the team's going to be better, coaching from behind, right? And I don't know that that's being done a whole lot right now. And, you know, I've never been in Division I won't coach. I don't know the pressures, and I'm not trying to say it, but I do know what's good. I know what's going on right now is not good, right? So there's got to be a way if you have all these resources, why can't you?

Why can't you? If you can pony up NIL money to do this, to get a player, why can't you pony up NIL money to support a player, right, to make sure that he's good? Yeah, yeah. It just seems like the right thing to do. Yeah, I mean, and we're talking about student athletes, we're talking about coaches, we're talking about the people, the support systems around, and we're talking about parents, because it really takes a community to do this at any level,

let alone the highest levels, right? Yeah. And I like to say that most coaches are an accumulation of greatnesses or flaws, right? So that you're a product of the people who coached you, your product of the systems around you, your product of the good things that coaches you've coached with and been coached by have done, and the bad things. And great coaches take the negative things that happened to them through coaching or by coaching and said, I'm never going to do that again.

Like, I'm never going to, I'm never going to do that to a player. You've been listening again. And I go back and forth. And, you know, we've had both of us, this particular coach, we've had situations with individual coaches, individual coaching situations, right, where they weren't good. And we've had this little saying back and forth, I said, well, we really got better as a coach, right?

Because when you do see a bad, bad situation. It does two things. It either says, I'm never going to do that and or it reinforces the good things that you know that you're about, right? So we were just talking to, Coach. You've been listening and again, Coach. I've got to sweep my place for bugs here. Right. Well, you know, you know, we've got that government contact. Talking to Barry Thompson, Fairfax School Academy, and again, the real story and full disclosure for folks that don't know. Barry and I were high school teammates.

Barry was a quarterback. I was a tailback. Tellback flanker. Barry was leadership. When I got to the program, he was established. And he was part of the standard bearers for how business was being handled in that program. And he was necessary. And then it helped me learn that you need those people in place who are positive

of leaders, but they are forward and up leaders. Like, Barry will tell you, look, I love you, man. Here's what I need from you, though. Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right. And, like, like, I don't think I've even even told Barry. Like, the value of what happened in my life comes from, in part, Barry Thompson's leadership at 16, 17, 18. And then, again, when we meet later in life as grownups and we say, listen,

here's what I'm doing. Do you want to be a part of it? You know, again, several times in life I was going to retire. Like, I was just going to stop working and just chill. And when I first moved back to Virginia, I ran into Barry like three days after I moved back to Virginia. And I was going to coach a little league team and I walk into this way in. And who meets me at the door, but my high school quarterback, right? He's not even looking for me.

He's not even looking for me, but he's looking for me. Like he, what he needs is exactly what I walked in the doorway. And he says, hey, man, what are you doing? I need you. Let me, now, you gave me great phrase. Let me bat this back a little bit so your listeners can fully understand what type of man you are. He is right. We were separated by about 23 years.

In between their, D.P. had written me a very nice note when he was in Utah. somehow found the address and was very laudatory and thankful and everything else. So here's the real deal. I had just taken a job as a head freshman coach at a particular high school, and I'd put together my staff. And as I'm approaching the first day, my staff is falling apart. Like, you know, one guy wouldn't call me back. Another guy that was counting on, he couldn't get through the gatehouse thing

or some minor thing off by a month, like if it had been run a month later, he'd have been fine. And so I'm falling apart, and I walk in to Falls Church High School, of all places. And to describe to your listeners, when you walk into the side, not the front of the school, but the side of the school, there's a long kind of hallway. And I'm walking in from one direction, and I haven't seen this man in 23 years, and he's walking from the opposite direction. And the very first thing I said, I go, what are you doing?

what do you need me to do? And I need you to fill out this paperwork and get on the field right away. And D.P. said yes. And D.P. said yes. So as you're listening, I don't know what you think about D.P. I know you think a lot of good things about it, but that's the type of man he has seen for 23 years. And I said, what are you doing? He says, what do you need me to do?

And I said, let's get going. And we got going. Yeah, and it was. Wait, wait, wait. So what's that guy you should say on the radio? And that is the rest of the story. Right. Who said that?

Right. Oh, yeah, it's old school. Okay, forget it. It's old school. Well, it was funny, too, because, like, I was going to coach a little league in this new space where I was going to be new to everything in it. And then you think high school sports, right? And I know the program, but I wasn't a part of it didn't go to school there.

And then the thing happens where we recognize that what would normally take five or six coaches? Yes, yes. We recognize on day one that it's just us. Right, because the third coach, we lost them. He called, you know, we had three. And the other guy that we lost is a really good coach, too. The only tragedy of not tragedy, but the only minus of that situation is that Josh Richards wasn't able, we weren't able to coach of Josh. Josh is an

outstanding young person and coach. But Josh with one guy I was holding on with my staff, he calls me up one day and says, I got some good news and some bad news. They will give me the good news. And he says, I just got a promotion. And the bad news was it meant that he couldn't get there. And it wound up just

DP and I coached 50 freshman kids. Yeah. And by the way, Paul Harvey is the guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was funny. So, and again, this is a pretty big high school and we've got 50, 60 kids, freshmen that we have to get together in like two weeks to play in the toughest part of Virginia. Right.

And we're there and then we go, okay, so how are we going to do this? Okay, you coach all the backs on offensive defense. I'll coach all the, all the linemen on offense and defense and special teams. And we'll get through. And we got through. And amongst that group, you know, you've got Naval Academy. West Point five that I know of are now college coaches, right? Several state champions.

I just found, I saw Will Cogan. He's actually coaching over at Madison High School. I was, Oakmars a field that we used a lot. Madison uses that for their lacrosse thing. And so I'm walking to an empty space with a couple of guys in the air, get off my field. It was Will Cogan. It's the, I mean, it's just a great.

group of guys and we said that to set this and we'll set this up we'll go to break when we'll come back i want to talk about what happened in that space as we were panicked on how we're going to coach three different units from two people and 60 kids at a new high school but in that the thing that happened was what changed our lives it changed the trajectory of the school and of those young people and that community and it showed up later two years three years later what happened in a in an office in fairfax virginia affected that school for the next 10 years we'll talk about that here with barry thompson when we come back download our app by searching 93.7 the ticket in your app store you're listening to one-on-one with dp on 937 the ticket and the ticketfm.com