HHF/GID Interview Series : John Hendryx - Head Coach at Winamac

[Guest DT]

HHF Interview with Winamac Head Coach John Hendryx

 

 

The 2nd year Warrior HC looks to build on last years sectional championship and continue to develop numbers , strength and overall team speed in 2021.

 

 

Thanks Coach for joining us at Hoosier High School Football and The Gridiron Digest

 

Question 1

Coach, you've spent your entire career coaching at the small school level, with success at all of your stops including Carroll (Flora), Northwestern and Knox. Your 2019 Knox team went 11-2, and Winamac was coming off of three consecutive 5-6 seasons under highly regarded Coach Craig Barr. What did you see, past or present, in the Winamac program that gave you the impetus to leave Knox while on top and take over what appeared to be a rebuild at Winamac?

Question 2

Winamac was a program under Tim Roth that treaded slightly above or below .500 for 20 years , until the Warriors took off and wion 25 of 27 games in 2013-14, including 2 sectionals and a regional. Did you sense that the school and the community at large were anxious and hungry to get back to that level of success when you came on board last season.?

Question 3

Your first season was highly successful, despite losing a few games to Covid, as your team finished 7-3 with a sectional title and a hard fought 37-32 regional loss to LCC. How would you assess your first year in charge of the program, and do you feel it laid the groundwork to propel your team even further here in Year 2?

Question 4

The HNAC was just recently formed in 2015, and has rapidly become a very solid league from top to bottom. Clearly, Pioneer has established itself as the big dog in the conference, winning all 5 HNAC titles in impressive fashion. How would you assess the league in terms of strength from top to bottom, who are some up and coming programs in your view, and how does the conference as a whole close the wide gap between itself and Pioneer?

Question 5

What will be your base offensive and defensive philosophies going into the 2021 season, and are you making any adjustments based on your returning personnel.?

Question 6

Winamac has been home to some big, rugged offensive and defensive linemen over the years. Who are some of the big guys in the trenches that will be doing the dirty work for your team this year?

Question 7

With regards to the skill positions and your special teams, who are the standouts that you will be counting on to provide leadership for your team this fall?

Question 8

Has the Success Factor or the current setup of the state tournament impacted Winamac either positively or negatively over the past years since its implementation?

Question 9

There have been rumblings that Winamac might have a special team coming back this season. What are your goals for the 2021 edition of the Warriors, and how are your kids responding this summer as they prepare for fall Friday night football?

 

 

Responses :

1. My interest in coming to Winamac was solely for one reason, it was the program I grew up in and have always followed closely. I was there at the inception of the Winamac program as an 8 year old kid when Winamac started football with my dad (Jack) who was an assistant coach for Bill Pugh who started the program. I've always stayed very in touch with the program with dad coaching there for over 30 years, my brother coaching there for 20 some years before joining me at Knox, and Tim Roth was one of those first Winamac players I thought so highly of. I'd had an opportunity to come home before as the head coach but the timing just wasn't right for me. When the job opened before the 2020 season I knew if I ever was going to make it back to the program I grew up in it was now or never as the end of my career is closing in fast. I know not all coaches get the opportunity to go home, and a lot would have no interest in going home, but being there now 50 years later that 8 year old kid still loves Winamac football.

 

2 I think all schools and communities are hungry to be at a high level. That's a very hard thing to do in !A football. You have such a fluctuation in talent when you're only dealing with 35-50 kids that some years are going to be better than others. Winamac is a perfect example, when they've had a lot of talent they've had phenomenal teams, when they didn't have ,the seasons weren't as productive. Tim and the coaching staff always did a phenomenal job coaching, but there's some years you just don't have as many good Jimmy's and Joe's as others. I was at 1A Carroll a long time, and when we had really good players we were pretty darn good, when we didn't we'd struggle. Winning isn't the priority, making sure every kid in the program, regardless of wins and losses, has a good experience and learns some life lessons is the most important thing to our program.

 

3. Our first year in the program was challenging, not just due to the Covid, but everything was condensed. We had a condensed summer so we didn't get the weight room time I'd like to have had, we didn't get to evaluate kids and get to know them as well as I'd have liked. July came and everyone had to hit the ground running to try and get ready. After about the mid point of the season we started to figure out what our kids could and couldn't do, and they started to get a lot better grasp on a totally new system. Once those things fell into place and we started to fit all the pieces we had a really good finish to our season. As far as that propelling us into year 2 time will tell. We have a lot of new faces and I'm anxious to see how they mesh with the players we have coming back. Every year is a new team with different strengths and weaknesses and different personalities, so I'm excited to see what 2021 will bring.

 

4. I think the HNAC is one of the top small school conferences in Indiana and I love the diversity our conference has and it's loaded with phenomenal coaching staffs and players. I really like the fact that our conference isn't full of teams that look identical and you see a variety of different styles of play- you have the power run game of Knox-the wing t of Pioneer and Triton-Lavilles multiple offense - the option game of North Judson- the full house T of Culver, and Caston is up and coming also using a very good option system. You get challenged by different looks every week which I think is great for you as you prepare for the tournament because you've seen so much diversity during the season. Pioneer has dominated the conference since it's inception, they have great coaching, great discipline, and their kids know how to win and expect to win. You close the gap with commitment, with effort, and you have to try to get your kids to play as hard as you know theirs are going to play. Everyone wants to beat them when they show up on Friday night, but what did you do the 364 days prior to the game to make that happen?

 

5. Our base offense will be a power run offense, with probably a little more I formation than we've used in the past due to the fact we've got a couple really talented tailbacks, and defensively our base defense is a 4-3.

 

6. In the trenches we return 4 of our 5 offensive linemen from last year Logan Schultz 6'5 275 T , Kyle Olds G, 6'2 250 Caleb Seymour 6'0 205 C and Jaxon Roudebush 6'1 190 G. We have 4 seniors Brendan Day 5'10 180 , Dylan Brown 6'1 215 , Jaden Klingerman 6'3 230 and Remington Schwartz 5'10 200 who will also get offensive line reps and one of them will become our other tackle, so we have 8 senior offensive linemen which is rare to have. Most of those guys will also anchor our defensive line along with Tyler Perry 6' 1 190 and Zayne Bell a 6'5 215 lb defensive end that started for us last year as a sophmore. I feel really good about our kids up front, I wouldn't say we're strong yet, but we're a lot stronger than we were a year ago and more athletic.

 

7. As far as the skilled positions, Russell Compton will be our starting QB as a 4 year starter- at the running back positions we return starters Hayden Clark and Jaden Terry and expect Jadon Jones, Xavier Holohan, Michael Loehmer, Maddox Bucinski to also be competing for time running the football. We have 3 Tight Ends that are varsity players and will split time, Beau Brandt, Tyler Perry and Zayne Bell. At the wide receiver spots we have Brayden Heather, Caleb Good, Talan Braun, Rryan Gregor and Jayse Bentl. I like the abundance of athletes we have this year, coming into Winamac we had 3 major problems we had to address- low numbers, poor strength, no speed. We have good numbers and a good number of skill players- like the linemen the skill players aren't what I'd call strong-but we're stronger-and we're faster and more athletic than a year ago, so we've made good progress in a year I think.

 

8. It's hard to me to judge how the success factor has impacted Winamac as someone that's always watched Winamac's success, but not really paid attention to their big picture. I know in 2000 Winamac had a phenomenal team that was beat by Luers in the semi-state and if the success factor had been in place-maybe Luers wouldn't have been in 2A. In their 1A semi state run I'm not sure if LCC was 1A or had been moved up so it's kind of hard for me to answer that question.

 

9. As I stated before, Every team is different and has it's own strength and weaknesses and personality. I know because we have a good number of kids back and won the sectional last year people have high hopes, but we won our 2 sectional games by a combined total of 13 points. We weren't blowing anyone out we were fighting for every second of both those games and very easily could have lost both of them, so some of the expectations need to be taken with a grain of salt. Last years sectional championship was and is the only sectional championship game any of these kids have ever played in, in any team sport, so I'm excited, but cautiously optimistic.Plain old luck will also play into a football season. The injury bug in football can bring a season crashing very quickly, so if we have some luck and avoid a lot of injury that's always a help. I am extremely proud of them though, they had no strength, couldn't run and really needed to play catch up in their overall knowledge of the game. In the off season our kids have responded tremendously and done everything we've asked. They've had a great year of strength development, they've had a really good effort this summer, so no matter what the final results of the 2021 season may end up being I'm very proud of them and the effort they've put in. I'm excited to get going.

 

 

Thanks Coach, and best of luck to you and your team in the coming season.

 

Tim Phillips

Hoosier High School Football

The Gridiron Digest