New Smoky Hill football coach John Trahan doesn’t mince words when it comes to the state of the program.
Knowing he is the fourth head coach in the past four seasons of a team that’s gone through its share of “turmoil,” Trahan plans to bring stability to a job that’s seen John Thompson, Justin Hoffman and Preston Davis wear the lead headset since just 2012.
With a non-nonsense approach, Trahan is eager to set the tone for a program that’s made just one playoff appearance and had just one non-losing season since 1990.
“When you have turnover like they’ve had in the past three or four years, it’s hard for any student athlete to learn what’s expected of them,” Trahan said.
“One of the things I sold to the student athletes and parents is that we’re not looking to come here and look for another job, we’re planning to be here consistently for a period of time and make sure we get this program on the right track and win football games.”
Trahan — whose connection with Smoky Hill began with his daughter playing tennis there before she graduated in 2013 — is one of five new head coaches in Aurora prep football programs for the 2015 season, which begins with official practice on Aug. 17.
He joins Travis Peeples (Aurora Central, story), Hoffman (Rangeview), Danny Filleman (Regis Jesuit) and John Sullivan (Vista PEAK, story) as new hires in a particularly tumultuous time in the Aurora prep coaching ranks.
Like Hoffman and Sullivan, Trahan has the invaluable advantage of serving on his team’s staff the previous season.
He helped out with Smoky Hill during last season’s 3-7 season on a staff that was cobbled together by former athletic director and interim head coach Davis, who dismissed Hoffman a day before the start of fall practice.
So Trahan starts with at least a base of knowledge in his second head coaching job, which follows his four-year stint at Montbello before the school closed in 2013 to be restructured.
“The players recognize me, which is different from the old staff who didn’t even know all of their names. That helps me in evaluating those particular returning athletes and helps us put them in the right places,” said Trahan, who was 7-4 with the Warriors in 2013 and finished 15-26 in four seasons.
While he made big strides in turning around the scuffling Warriors, Trahan —a 1980 Thomas Jefferson High School graduate who played at the University of Southern Colorado — now CSU-Pueblo — before a brief NFL career — encountered a lot of challenges that he won’t face at Smoky Hill.
For one, Montbello had been slated to close for a few years, making it hard at times to keep the focus of students who knew the end was coming. He also faced a slew of eligibility problems that made game planning every week more difficult, so he’s looking forward to a program where he won’t be dealing with the same issues.
“That does not appear to be a problem here, so we can have more consistency in practice and games,” Trahan said.
Trahan does have a new resource in Thompson, who was recently hired as the school’s athletic director.
Thompson led Smoky Hill to its benchmark season in football in the past quarter century, a 2007 campaign that saw a high-flying offense help produce a 5-5 record and the Buffs’ first Class 5A state playoff appearance since 1990.
“I told the guys over the summer that we’re setting our goals high,” Trahan said. “We haven’t been to the playoffs in awhile and we want to be in the playoffs. That is the top goal and the rest will fall into place.”
Part of making a team capable of making a playoff run is working on team chemistry.
Since his hire in February, Trahan has seen his players develop more team chemistry through conditioning programs, summer camps, 7-on-7 work and linemen challenges.
“They like to hang out together now, so I’m excited about what we’re seeing,” Trahan said. “We look more like a team than we did in the fall…With a full offseason and a summer behind us, I’m expecting these guys to perform quite well.
“They were in a tough spot last year, especially at the beginning where they met the coaches right before practice started,” he added. “I’m looking forward to how they handle what we have for them.”
Courtney Oakes is Sports Editor of the Aurora Sentinel. Reach him at 303-750-7555 or sports@aurorasentinel.com. Twitter: @aurorasports. FB: Aurora Prep Sentinel
