Sewing the seeds of success: BCHS grad shares how athletics benefited his life

Athletics at Brownstown Central High School have been extremely successful over the past decade.

Our teams have outshined others in our conference by a tremendous margin, though the all-sports trophy hasn’t been claimed by BCHS because of the addition of swimming, wrestling and soccer, which don’t exist at the school. Regardless, the really successful teams at Brownstown all have many attributes in common: hard work, determination, dedication, huge fan support, excellent coaching staffs, to name a few.
Building these excellent teams takes sacrifice and coordination from many different working parts of the community, but mostly from the players and coaches. The skills learned and practiced on these fields of friendly strife sew the seeds of success, which are reaped in the future for exponential benefits.

Mainly, I personally want to take a look at the fundamentals of leadership and hard work that I learned from my own experiences as a former member of the football team (2000-03). I personally can only speak about what I learned from playing football and running track, but I am sure that many of the subjects I touch upon are common on many of the other sports teams, and some which are probably not. 

After graduating from West Point, over this past year, I have linked many leadership practices from the Army that BCHS football coach Reed May institutes on the team as well. Now that might sound a bit harsh, but in reality the two have similar goals—to eventually take a random group of boys/soldiers and have them working as a team by a certain deadline. The Army obviously has a stricter program than Coach May, but not by a large margin. Coach May expects a lot out of the high school kids he coaches and expects them to act like men, even if they have never acted that way before. I had to grow up a lot faster on the football team than I would have anywhere else. The team and Coach May teach you to be tough, mentally and physically, to be on time and motivated to practice/lift/condition, and to be dedicated to a common goal shared by every member of the team and the coaching staff. 

First of all, let’s touch on leadership. I had never been in any kind of noteworthy leadership position until I was on the football team. It was the first time I realized I was in a leadership position and that people actually looked to me for guidance. Every year, Coach May sat down with the incoming seniors—usually a couple of days after losing in the tournament—and laid down what he expected, while simultaneously trying to touch base with each of his leaders. All of the seniors were expected to be leaders and team captains, regardless of past experience, playing time or athletic ability. This way, he could harness the strengths of everyone, and also to avoid pressuring one individual with the responsibility of everyone’s actions. It also gave him a whipping post of sorts that he could use to discipline the whole team.

I can remember one specific example when I was a junior and we had a lousy week of practice during tournament time toward the end of the season, and Coach May had the senior class stay after for some words. I still remember how fired up the seniors were and that we even had a little pep rally so they could fire up the rest of the team with some of their words.

Of how this correlates to individual development, this type of peer leadership is one of the hardest roles to fill, but can also be the most beneficial for everyone involved and builds teamwork. It allows the other players to see how much these last games mean to the senior class and what they will do to win. The only other time I have ever seen leadership development this beneficial was in U.S. Army Ranger School. 

Next, let’s discuss dedication. Coach May and many other sports coaches require their players to participate in summer conditioning, summer camps and competitions and winter weights, and they are encouraged to play other sports, all while keeping their grades in good standing. This may be hard to balance, but it teaches the kids time-management skills and eventually shows them the benefits of hard work.

One example off of the top of my head is seventh- and eighth-grade football. During our seventh-grade season, we went 7-0-1, tying our last game with Salem. Then, after our seventh-grade season was over, we started winter weights for the first time, and the end result was astounding. In seventh grade, we squeaked by in a couple of games and never won by more than a couple of points. After we had spent the winter, spring and summer lifting weights and conditioning, we would beat teams by four or five touchdowns on many if not all occasions and finished the season 7-0.

The hard work Coach May demands and the amount of time a player has to sacrifice taught the player the benefits of hard work. It showed me that in order to get what you wanted in life you had to work harder than the rest. If someone was slacking off in the weight room or on the field, that meant that I was going to be that much better than that person. Every drill and every exercise was a chance to get better, a chance that would never come again. So I would run and lift my hardest and give everything I had, and I believe it paid off. That hard work and sacrifice made each win that much more enjoyable.

Third, let’s talk about the physical and mental toughness developed on the team. Every player may not possess a high degree of mental toughness when he first starts playing on the team, but it is inherently developed by the nature of the sport and from Coach May’s need for perfection. He would often say, “Practice doesn’t make perfect, but perfect practice makes perfect.” He definitely coached by this rule.

I can remember a few times I was close to quitting the team just because of the amount I would get yelled at; however, I will admit that the majority of it was due to a mistake made by me in practice. Some of these griping out sessions we received were needed to either motivate us to practice harder, study our plays or to simply adjust our attitude. The physical toughness is mainly possessed by the individual at first, but after practicing next to your teammate for years, in some of our cases, we knew deep down that if we were to bow out with some type of injury that it would hurt the team as a whole. 

Finally, I am going to hit on teamwork. The football team at BCHS is truly dedicated to teamwork, and even to the point of criticism. For instance, Coach May’s policy every year is to reload instead of rebuild, meaning that regardless of the talent leaving the team, he still expects the next year’s team to be just as good and motivated. The reason I say to the point of criticism is that I once had a discussion with a certain individual of the community who said, “Coach May’s policy of reloading every year is foolish, you can never have a successful team that way.” The individual believes in building a team around one player or one class. I believe this is what causes great fluctuations in records over the years and is the reason Coach May has had a very consistent win/loss record.

Moving on, earlier when I mentioned the case where another player was slacking off and I took it as my chance to pass them and get better than them, well, I changed my outlook by the time I became a senior. Once I became a senior/captain, when a person would slack off like that, I and many of the other seniors took it as an insult and knew that the lazy player was not only hurting himself, but also the team. This knowledge motivated us to motivate him, so I would not only do the drill hard myself, but then encourage others to do so as well. The teamwork learned at BCHS on the football team has been rivaled by very few other teams I have been a part of. 

I can only say that I have just skimmed the surface on the benefits of playing football at BCHS, but I hope that I have helped everyone realize the exceptional quality of the football program and its coaching staff at BCHS. The leadership demonstrated by Coach May and the care and compassion he has for each one of his players is beyond belief, proven by the fact that almost all of his assistants now have played for him. They all must have seen something they liked about the program and now want to help in any way they can. I know I personally would relish the thought of coming back to coach under him.

I would encourage every boy thinking about trying out for the football team to at least try it out for a whole season, because Coach May doesn’t make cuts. Everyone makes the team. I know that if I hadn’t played, I would have missed out on the chance of a lifetime and an experience I will hold onto forever.

About Sean Schwartz

U.S. Army 2nd Lt. Sean Schwartz is a 2004 graduate of Brownstown Central High School and a 2008 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point in New York.

Schwartz played football at BCHS and he played sprint football at West Point. Sprint football has the same rules as regular college football, but the weight limit for players is 172 pounds. There are currently six teams playing in the Collegiate Sprint Football League: Army, Cornell, Mansfield, Navy, Pennsylvania and Princeton.

He played outside linebacker for four years and lettered each year.

Currently, Schwartz is at Fort Benning, Georgia, for infantry training and will be there another year because of his injury at Ranger School. When he’s healthy, Schwartz plans to return to Ranger School, graduate and head to Fort Drum, New York, to be a platoon leader.

In November, Schwartz will be promoted to first lieutenant.