“Make the big time where you are.”
Doug Kerr firmly believes high school football is big time under the Friday night lights no matter where the game is played. His plans for Iola High Mustang football as head coach is to continue to push the program on its forward journey.
“I told the boys when I met with them Monday that when those lights come on Friday nights in the fall, it doesn’t matter where you are playing, it is big time. I want the Iola players to realize there’s more to football than just showing up and playing a game,” Kerr said.
Kerr returns to Kansas after coaching and teaching in Florida for 14 years. He is a native of Derby where he played football, basketball, baseball and wrestled for Derby High School.
“Having those butterflies and the anticipation of playing under the lights on a Friday night should be experienced by every high school football player every game,” Kerr said. “Football is football whether it’s played in south Florida or in Iola, Kansas.”
Kerr said he’s familiar with Iola and southeast Kansas. He had family in Yates Center he visited while growing up. He also played two years of football at Fort Scott Community College as an offensive lineman.
Kerr went on to play two more years of college football at Lindenwood University in Saint Charles, Mo. He earned a degree in broadcast journalism at LU and worked for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and produced a radio show.
“My college coach took a job at a Florida high school and contacted me to see if I wanted to come and be on his coaching staff. I’d also taught television production, and that’s how my coaching career began,” Kerr said.
Kerr’s first head football coaching position was at Bronson Middle High School — sixth grade through 12th — in Bronson, Fla. Kerr said BMHS was a small high school and in the two years he was there the team made the playoffs.
“My second head coaching job was at Port St. Lucie High. It was a school of 2,000 students but only 24 kids came out for football. We rebuilt the program from uniforms, equipment, facilities and weight room,” Kerr said.
Kerr said offensively, “think outside the box” for the new Iola High offense. He said he grew up running an I-formation in high school but that’s not for him as a coach.
“If you want to call it by name it is a form of the single-wing offense. We’ll be in the shotgun look but have a lot of running backs involved in the offense,” Kerr said.
“Defensively, we will be in a three-man front. Iola doesn’t have a lot of big kids and to run a four-man front you have to have the big guys up front.”
Kerr said assistant coaches Mark Percy and Cody Hager helped this week while he was in Iola for a visit.
“Basically, I plan to melt in some of what I want with some of what the kids already know. We want to make the kids comfortable and the transition period short.”
