The Collected Wisdom of Allan Trimble

Interviewed by Scott Wright

Published: July 22, 2007

Allan Trimble is heading into his 12th season as the head coach at Jenks and 21st season in coaching. He's coming off one of the most unexpected, life-altering seasons of his career when one of his players, Garrett Bennett, died in a car accident just weeks before fall practice opened.

Last year was a year of the most heartache and a year of the most pride combined in one season that I've ever been a part of. I'm still constantly reminded of how precious life is. I've made a conscious effort not to take that for granted anymore. I try to tell my players, my family, my daughters and my friends more often that I appreciate them. We're not in control of our situation sometimes.

We try really hard to make our football program a family and when you lose one of your family members, there's nothing but the good Lord's inspiration and comfort, and time that will ease the pain.

I consider myself a pretty thorough guy in planning ahead. In game situations, we like to think we've got an answer for almost everything. It was a situation where there was no plan. There were no words or no deeds that you could do to help deal with that.

A lot has changed in football since I began coaching. The technology has changed, for sure. Some of the scouting software and video software is absolutely amazing. It can make you very efficient.

Everybody says the kids are so much bigger. We haven't seen that here, but we've definitely seen kids that are more efficient, stronger and faster at earlier ages, I think, because of the technology and they're starting earlier.

I've heard people say, ‘We realized when my child was 4 that he was an amazingly gifted player, so we're going to a private gym with a private trainer.' Everybody's trying to gain some type of advantage through specialized training.

A lot of times, I think players' and parents' motives are good, but I think their methods are a little skewed. But that's just from my perspective, because to me, working out together and being dedicated together as a team is so much more important than the athleticism building. I think that's a difficult and challenging situation for coaches.

As coaches, we have to coach attitude just as much as we coach conditioning or X's and O's. Team chemistry, getting all of them pulling on the same end of the rope is everything with regards to football. Trying to get them all to accomplish something greater as a team than by themselves has always been a coaching challenge, a coaching goal.

Kids still enjoy structure and they still enjoy working with a purpose in mind. The methods of coaching have had to adapt a great deal to meet the needs of the kids. The kids are socially oriented, friend-oriented.

You can't really draw a line in the sand anymore. You have to treat them all fairly, yet you can't treat them all the same, like we used to. That's been a big challenge.

There's so much communication through media, television and things — many examples covered in newspapers and media of poor attitudes. Some of those guys that are amazing players and great team players get overlooked, because it's not as good a news story, I guess.

I was just your normal Class 2A, Class 3A guy from Cleveland, Okla. We didn't get our first set of free weights until I was a junior in high school. At that time, technology just was not what it is now and the training methods were different. I wish we would have had more structure and organization in our offseason training programs. It definitely would have been advantageous.

These days, recruiting is a lot different. Back then, they recruited off potential. How big is the kid gonna get? How strong is he gonna get? That's because the kids started working out so much later. Now we're producing kids that, at times, are college-ready, because they've been training for five or six years.

Coaches are very educated now. You saw the trend really take off when Bob Stoops took over at OU and brought in Josh Heupel. They started throwing the ball around the field. Then came the influence of Texas Tech.

The offenses have become so much better. You can't sack the quarterback well. They throw the ball efficiently. When I started coaching, very few people could

throw the ball well enough to beat

you. Now, a lot of teams can.

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