All right, without any further ado, this has been kind of an exciting week for me because it’s been a chance to go ahead and reconnect with one of our former players.

I’m going to talk about his accolades first and then I’m going to talk about the most important parts of who this gentleman is. He a three-year starter for us. He was a three-time all-conference player, three-time all-area player, most valuable defensive lineman in the program as a sophomore, most valuable defensive player in his junior and his senior year. He was academic all-state. He was the top 50 player in the state of Indiana as a senior.

He accounted for:

• 184 tackles
• 21 sacks
• 28 tackles for a loss
• nine pass deflections
• one block putt against Penn
• and he is a state runner-up.

He then went on, full-ride scholarship to Indiana University, and that is where the true story behind Cooper Jones comes in. Had you had the opportunity to see him play, but more specifically coach him, you knew he was different.

And what separated him from many of his teammates and from many of the players we’ve seen over the last 20 years was just a sheer love for the sport, his teammates.

And his lack and willingness to not go ahead and say, "you know what, it was a bad play, we’ll get it next time." He had a resiliency about him, he had a mentality that he was never going to be outworked. And it wasn’t because he was so big or because life was easy because he was such a good athlete. He went on to IU where he got recruited as a defensive lineman and imagine how hard this would be. He was asked to switch to offensive line. All right, imagine our defensive lineman right now saying hey, listen, you know what you have poured your entire heart and soul into being a defensive lineman. That’s what we recruited you for. That’s what we’re paying you to do to get an education and be here. But now with a new coaching staff, we’re gonna ask you to go ahead and do something that’s completely foreign to you and I’m sure without even a blink of his eye was of course coach anything that you need. All right. He is a great young man. He is going to be a civil servant. He is going to hopefully get a job in the local law enforcement areas and possibly work his way up to Secret Service. At least that’s what his goal is. But without any further ado one of the most I will tell you relentless motors of any player that I have ever coached in my entire career or have the privilege to play next to, Cooper Jones.

First I want to say I’m honored to be here boys. Thanks Coach Marshall for the kind words and none of that would have been possible without all the coaches over there and guess what? You all still have the same coaches. They know what they’re talking about. They know what they’re doing. So listen to that. I want to start off before I get into my big speech into saying my sophomore year we started 0-2 a lot like you guys. Lost two real good teams, went to Penn lost a close one, went up to Mishawaka got our asses kicked.

We could have patted about it. We could have been like, oh man, we’re 0-2, whatever. No, we had good senior leaders on the team. Everybody listened to what the coaches were saying. We got better every week at practice and made it all the way to semi-state. And if Carmel didn’t run the greatest read option of all time, we might have been in the dump. So what I’m saying is the season’s not lost.

You play two real good teams. You put up a good fight. It’s in the rear view mirror. Learn from it. Be pissed off you lost. Nobody likes losing, but it’s not the end of the world. So keep getting better every day.

Okay, real speech, I want to talk to you guys today about pride. Pride in this football program, this city, and what you’re doing, right? This high school, think about it, there’s only been a select few guys that have been privileged enough to earn their right to wear a Valparaiso High School football jersey. You guys earned that, you’ve earned that, that’s the first, you guys have earned that already, right? Okay, now you got to keep doing it, right? That’s the pride. Because everybody in this town, all your relatives, everybody who watches you, they have that same pride for this sport, this, your team, they’re rooting for you, right?

So with that, you have to have pride in yourself, in everything you do, and it starts in these hallways, right? Tomorrow, when you come here, and you’re walking around in your jersey, make sure it’s tucked in, because you’re reflecting yourself, your teammates, your parents, everybody, in little things, right? Like missing assignments, you should never have a missing assignment. If you have a missing assignment, how is he going to play you? How is Coach Bernard going to expect you to play linebacker if you can’t turn in a math assignment, right? Little things that make a big difference. Pride in everything you do, because it all matters, it all reflects back on you, because you’re a man, right?

You all want to be good men when you grow up, right? You’re aspiring to be good men. Take pride in that, pride in your self-image, right? So it starts in the hallways, then it goes to practice. It starts with film. I know you guys watch film on Mondays. How many of you can look in the mirror and say, every Monday when I go in there, I’m going to give my undivided attention to what coach is saying?

Hell, I might even bring a notebook and write something down, right? I don’t need you to answer it, but think about it. If the answer is no, why the hell not? You’re going to, right? Make a change. Pay attention to that film. That film’s not just for the coaches to have an extra 30, 45 minutes before practice.

It means something. Take advantage of it. When you go home at night, how many of you guys watch film this week on LaPorte? I know Berf will probably joke about it, saying, oh, you got 12 minutes. Yeah, he’s joking, but he’s also dead serious. Because if you’re not watching film, how do they expect you to know what the hell is going on? Because you’re practicing but there’s all this time where you can be watching film getting ready knowing what you’re gonna do. Everything you can do between that end of that last game when you guys lost Brother Rice and you play LaPorte you have a lot of time to get ready. Let’s go beat the Slicers. Did you put all that work in? Did you do everything you can do? That’s pride. You got to love this game and love this school man. That’s what you’ve got to do. You’re gonna have pride and then it’s practice. It’s walkthroughs. How many times did you have to read through a walkthrough rep?

It’s a Thursday. That shouldn’t happen. It’s fixable, but it’s no laughing matter. Thursday should be perfect. It should be no mistakes. You’ve seen these plays a hundred times. There should be no mistakes and it shouldn’t be half-assed. It should be full speed because this is the last chance you get before you play, right? Next time you put your cleats on and go out on a football field you play LaPorte and they want nothing more than to kick your ass. If they beat you tomorrow night they’ll put that football in a trophy case with the date and the score and they’ll be like, hey, yeah, we were whatever that year, but we beat Valpo. Nobody’s done that forever. Right, like they want it. Who cares how good they are doesn’t matter. It’s about you, the pride in yourself and how you conduct yourself and it starts at practice. It was a little slow today. Just look outside looking in. Little lollygagging, a little a lot of plays re-ran on defense. Like that’s the stuff that can’t happen if you have pride. Like if you’re the defense lineman I was talking to them. It’s like you guys go, everybody else on defense goes. It’s unquestionable. Because if you’re going hard everybody else gonna fall right because the linebackers’ heads are spinning. It’s a tough offense this week, guys going this way, guys going that way. You take all the pressure off them by just going. You’re just blowing stuff up, right? Offense looked good. They looked great. Right, like, there’s things that you can, it should be perfect on a Thursday. They’re holding the hand shield for God’s sake. There should be no linebackers shooting underneath the defensive end.

There should be no receivers running a wrong route because you had all week to get ready for it. This is it. Like, that’s what you ran today is what you’re running tomorrow. So if you ran a post where you should run a corner, guess what? Not a lot of time left to fix that. That’s pride though. I’m not trying to insult you guys.

It should be, it should burn you up if you don’t have a perfect Thursday. It should eat at you. And it starts when you jog out on the field. When you go out into practice, it should be, I won, I’m ready to practice today. I’m ready to go. I care so much about this team and the guys that are next to me, I’m not gonna let anybody have a bad practice. Because it takes a lot of guys to do that, to have a good practice.

But all it takes is one or two mopey asses to infect everybody, be like, oh, it’s a Thursday. It’s so long. Can we run the same scout period seven times in a row? And guess what? Then you lose to LaPorte. Not good. It’s that pride that you need.

And you guys all have it in you. You already earned the right to be a football player here. You have it in. If you didn’t have it, you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t have worked all summer. You wouldn’t have lifted all those weights, ran all those sprints, had coaches yell at you all summer, all August, to then just not give it all now? This is the best part of the season.

You’re playing football. So have that pride. Get after it. And then it’s the little things again. How many of you guys stayed after and made sure that locker room was clean? Every day. That’s your locker room.

That is the nicest locker room I’ve ever, it might be nicer than my college locker room. That thing is nice. Is it clean every day? Who’s a leader that’s gonna be like, you know what, I’ll stay another 10 minutes, I don’t need to get home right away. I’ll make sure there’s no wrist tape on the ground. I’ll throw the water bottles away. That’s the stuff that makes you good.

Me and Brett Auerbacher stayed after every practice and cleaned up the locker room. And I’m not saying that because, I’m not trying to promote myself, but I’m saying that’s the things you do. Those are the little things you do. How many of you guys stay after practice? Thursday’s a little different, you gotta get up and eat, I know that. I know none of you showered, which is crazy, but. It’s true.

How many of you guys, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, stay after practice 10 minutes? It’s not a lot of time. Go with the sleds. Throw a couple routes, whatever. But it’s a long season. Those 10 minutes every day, you’re stacking minutes. Week after week, guess what?

You fit a whole three, four more practices in that year. And those are easy things. I’m not talking about skills or fundamentals. I’m talking about things that you could change tomorrow if you just had a little pride in it, if you just really want it. And these coaches can’t make you want it. They give you the X’s and O’s. They can lead the horse to water.

You’ve got to drink. You’ve got to want it. And I’m not saying you don’t, but you’ve got to just, it should fire you up, man. 0 and 2, man, screw that. Man, LaPorte’s in your way, like, oh, come on, come on. Man on this. Does anybody know why LaPorte’s called the Slicers?

Anybody? What? Say it louder, have a little pride, man. A meatpacking company? Exactly. Meatpacking company. Anybody know in the animal kingdom what a pride is?

What is that group of animals? Lions. Lions, right? So you’re telling me a group of lions is going to LaPorte tomorrow in a meatpacking place? A bunch of lions where a bunch of meat is? It should be carnage. You should be licking your chops at this opportunity because there’s not a lot left.

There’s not a lot left. But you can make it whatever you want. You can stay on the same path of just doing whatever or you can take control, turn the season around, and go kick some ass, boys. Because everybody in here that’s helping out, they have a lot of pride in this team. And they put in a lot of hours. Just feed off that. Feed off everyone else doing the same thing.

And you guys will be great. You’ll be great. But it’s all about the little things. It’s all about having a little pride. Thank you, guys.