Today’s interviewee is St. Pius coach Paul Standard, whose team opened with a 38-28 victory over then-No. 5 Flowery Branch of Class 4A last week. It was St. Pius’ first opening-game victory since 2013. St. Pius moved into the 5A rankings at No. 10 this week.
Paul Standard, St. Pius head coach
1. What won the day against Flowery Branch? “I truly believe our senior leadership ‘won the day’ in our opening game against a very talented and well-coached Flower Branch team. We have 26 seniors – an extremely large number for a school our size (1,100 students and just over 500 males) – who have done a tremendous job of leading our team starting the week after we lost to Woodward Academy in the playoffs. Their leadership was certainly challenged once we began the quarantine in mid-March, but again they stepped up and made sure their teammates were completing the strength and conditioning plan set forth by our strength coach, Ryan Liccardo. When our players returned in person in June, I was pleasantly surprised how our team looked physically and the mindset they had to get to work and to have a 2020 season. What our team did well Friday that allowed us to be successful was, offensively, we were very efficient and able to control the ball and clock throughout most of the game. Defensively, I thought we played the run very well against a team that has a tremendous offensive line and running back. But I believe the biggest factor was the mental toughness our players showed when multiple times there were opportunities for the tide of emotion to shift and we were fortunate to either make a key stop or to answer with a scoring drive.”
2. This is the first opening-game win for St. Pius in seven years. You could’ve solved that by playing easier teams. Do you feel winning early games, specifically the opener, might be a little overrated? “Yes, it makes it kind of difficult to win when it is always Blessed Trinity in game one. My feelings about winning game one is that it is overrated. I am going to repeat what I tell our team every single year. We play good teams, talented and well-coached, to start every year for a reason. We have to be in a continuous process of getting better, and I believe you do that by playing good competition. Now that being said, the team, community and administration must understand this and be able to handle winning and/or losing early non-region games. Whether we are 4-0, 0-4, or somewhere in between, we must get better and be able to handle the results each week mentally and emotionally. I remind them of our team in 2017. We started the season losing the first five non-region games (BT, Marist, Benedictine, Lanier and GAC) and then went undefeated in region play and advanced to the semifinals. That team handled the adversity and continued to get better. So it definitely depends on the team.”
3. St. Pius probably has more wins per pass attempt than any team this century (just joking, but might be true). That’s at a time when most teams are spreading the field and throwing more than ever. Besides the fact that you keep winning, what allows you to resist the temptation to follow the trend? “I think it is a combination of things. I truly believe what we do offensively fits the personnel that we have year in and year out here at St. Pius X. We do not have ‘five-star players,’ whatever that means, but we have ‘five-star kids,’ meaning they are disciplined, hard-working, coachable and unselfish young men who are willing to do what is necessary for the team to be successful. I also believe that since most teams do not see what we do very often that it is an advantage for us. We are usually outsized, and most weeks have less speed than our opponents, but I think it is hard to get prepared for this offense in three days.”
4. You’re playing in 5A now. What was your reaction to that news that you’d be moving up, and how confident are you at playing at a higher level? “Well, I hope my answer does not get me into trouble, but here goes. I felt that the powers that be were going to change the multiplier, etc., and we would be moving up, so it was not a shock or surprise. The so-called ‘advantage’ that we are supposed to have as a private school, I don’t see it when it comes to our personnel. If we are recruiting, which would be illegal, then we better fire our recruiting coordinator! I would not trade one of my players for anyone. Our staff and myself love coaching our kids, whose parents work hard to pay the tuition to attend our school. I wouldn’t have it any other way. At the beginning of the season, a list of the ‘top ten most noteworthy’ transfers in high school football in our state dealt with student-athletes transferring from one public school to another, in most cases within the same county with one exception of a public school student moving back to a private school he had previously attended. So I am not sure how well that rule works, and the new rule only affects about 10 football playing schools. In terms of our outlook, playing up in classification, we will not make any excuses for our placement in any classification. In my 20 years here at St Pius X, we have played up in classification every season except from 2008 through 2013 when the multiplier was dropped. And we have been fortunate to have success in each of those years except one, 2016. So our expectations are the same every year – be the best we can be and let’s see what happens at the end of the season.”
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