At its meeting Monday night, the Tippecanoe Valley School Board approved the hiring of Fairfield assistant football coach Darin Holsopple to fill the head coaching vacancy created last month by the resignation of Scott Bibler. Holsopple was also the head track coach at Fairfield, and comes with 11 years coaching experience. He said he’s been looking forward to becoming a head football coach for quite some time. ”This is something that I’ve been dreaming about as long as I can remember,” he said. “It’s something my wife (Darcy) has been praying abut for a while now. We’re just really, really excited about what the future holds for us.” Valley Athletic Director Duane Burkhart said the committee consisting of himself, principal Mike Bendicsen and assistant A.D. Scott Smith reviewed nine applications for the position. “Obviously we had a late resignation, in the last part of June, with Scott Bibler and his career change,” Burkhart said. “We posted the job the day Scott resigned, and had nine people apply. We interviewed four, and Darin was one of our top-two candidates, and we interviewed the two candidates for school board approval. “Darin came very highly recommended from the coaching ranks, and he’s also a teacher. He was a semifinalist for Indiana Teacher of the Year; he’s had 11 years of experience coaching at Fairfield, which has had some success in its athletic programs. He was someone we were very interested in pursuing to hire.” Holsopple said he plans to keep things simple for the players, so they spend less time thinking and more time doing in a fast-paced environment. “Our defense is not going to appear simple, but in reality the job of any coach or teacher is to make things simple enough for people to understand,” he said. “So I’ve come up with some rules that will make it really easy. “The number one goal I have for our team is to be able to play fast. I don’t think you can win if you’re thinking too much, and I want to make things simple so they can react to what’s coming at them so they can play fast and play confidently.” Simplicity, rather than a specific scheme, will also be the order of the day on offense. “There’s really no right system, especially for high school football. If you look at the teams that are successful, they’re not all running all the same systems. They have some characteristics that are the same in the program,” Holsopple said. “Scheme wise, I do want to make sure the stuff we’re running is something we can adapt from year-to-year as personnel changes and as talents change. We want to be adaptable, but in the end schemes are secondary in high school football.” The new head coach said he feels football is a lot more than the results on Friday nights. “Relationships are the biggest reason why I coach,” he said. “Wins and losses, they come and go, but the thing I value above all else is the relationships with the kids. It’s something I feel I’ve done very well in my time at Fairfield, and I’m looking forward to being ale to do the same thing at Tippecanoe Valley. “One of my biggest goals is to help them grow into adulthood, and one of the big things about being a man is to handle adversity. Not that it’s easy or something to look forward to, but just to be able to help them grow and move forward.” Burkhart said he’s glad to have a coach in place, and thankful for the assistants who kept the program going in the interim, but admitted the Viking program is behind schedule with practice beginning August 3. “We’re behind the 8-ball,” Burkhart said. “Jeff Shriver and the assistant coaches have been carrying the load for us as far as conditioning and weights and the summer program. I commend the assistant coaches for picking up the slack. The thing is everybody else has been working with their head coach this summer, so this puts us behind. “It’s going to be a slower transition because of the late hire, and anytime you hire a new coach it’s going to be a couple of years of transition to the changes he wants to put in place.” Burkhart also said the assistant coaches will stay on at least through the 2015 football season.
