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When Rod Wildman talks Triton, he talks talent.
The new head football coach, hired Tuesday, sees plenty of it.
"The talent's here, you can see that," he said. "Triton just won the all-conference sports trophy. It's just a matter of getting them more geared to football and getting the athletes out."
The problem at Triton, he said, hasn't always been the size or speed of the players. It's the mindset, the mental part of the game. A .500 record has been unreachable for Class A Triton the last several years. Brad Shields (now at Peru) guided the Trojans to a 3-7 record last year, cause for celebration because they won their first-round sectional game.
"Ninety percent of it in high school is getting them prepared mentally and wanting to play," Wildman said. "It's a matter of getting them in the habit of winning."
Wildman and his players will be sent on a crash course as he attempts to build a winning program. His hiring comes less than three weeks before the first practice.
"We're kind of under the gun now," he said. "We've got only two weeks to go now. They have a good program going. Brad Shields had a nice season, and I'd just like to continue that. Hopefully we can build a tradition."
Wildman, 41, established several rushing records when he played for the Warsaw Tigers in the early 1970s. He rushed for 281 yards in a 34-6 win over Columbia City in 1973. He also holds the record for most rushing yards in a season (1,652 in 1972) and a career (3,158).
"In high school you have to establish the run, mainly because you don't get the skilled people regularly," Wildman said. "And then you don't have the time to always be with the skilled people, especially in a small school like Triton. Your football players also play basketball, baseball and run track.
"You don't have the time to develop a real passing game, although I like to throw the ball. But we'll run the ball and get that going. Then I like to do a lot of play-action passes off the run."
Most of Wildman's previous coaching experience came at Culver Community High School. He coached football there six years, including three as a head coach. Since then, he coached middle school football in the state of Washington for four years then moved to Winona Lake one year ago. He coached junior high football at Warsaw last year.
Wildman was also an assistant for Warsaw's high school team several years ago before he took the Culver job.
He is technically replacing Trent Grider as Triton's coach. When Shields resigned after last season to go to Peru, Triton replaced him with Grider in early May. Grider, who had coached at the college level, owned a 25-30 record in five years as head coach at Class A Tri-Central.
But Grider never got started at Triton. He resigned July 8 to take a coaching job at Class 5A Richmond.
Wildman applied after Shields resigned and was a finalist for the job then.
"I was happy with the interviews, but (Grider) had great qualifications," Wildman said. "He had coached and played in college. The next interview, I told them, shoot, I would have hired him, too."
Wildman will teach high school physical education at Triton. After coaching at Culver, Wildman knows what he's getting into. Culver and Triton are both in the Northern State Conference, which features football powerhouses Bremen and Jimtown.
"It will take a little time," he said. "It's a tough conference with Bremen and Jimtown. And I think Triton is one of the smallest schools. So you're fighting a lot of things there.
"Hopefully people will see a team that is enthusiastic. If you go out there and hustle, play hard and hit hard, you're gonna win some ball games."
