The North Vermilion Patriots have one of the toughest schedules in all of Acadiana football. They opened the year facing Kaplan, Erath, and Abbeville. All three games were decided by one score, with the Patriots dropping two of them to sit at 1-2. The second half of the season includes games against St. Thomas More, Lafayette Christian Academy, and Teurlings Catholic, all powerful programs.
However, Coach Joe Heintz is focused on keeping his guys grounded. He knows that they could very easily be 3-0 right now, and that they are getting closer to being where they want to be. He wants his guys to stay focused on each opportunity, rather than be overwhelmed with the schedule in front of them.
North Vermilion Head Football Coach Joe Heintz is the subject of today’s Prep Profile Q&A.
Question: Coach, we will start by rewinding back a little bit to start the year. What were the expectations coming in and the identity of this team?
Answer: We felt like coming into the season our expectations were just to play as hard as we possibly can play, see improvement from from week to week game to game, and I really wanted to play with physicality. We really emphasize being physical on both sides of the ball, especially up front.
Q: So through three games, a couple of close ones haven’t quite gone your way in the end, but overall kind of what’s been your assessment of how your team?
A: We’re very competitive. We played from whistle to whistle. We played for four quarters. We’ve seen improvement each week both on offense and defense and if a couple of plays had gone differently, we would be 3-0 instead of 1-2. So we’re close right now. We’re real close and we see improvement from week to week.
Q: This week specifically, you’ve got a Thursday night game. So how does that change your preparation?
A: It changes the preparation in the fact that we play a day earlier than normal. But I think the guys, and I’m the same way, we’re ready to play. We wanted to play right after the game last Friday night and we were ready to suit up and play again. I think this team has the mentality that they’re ready to get out there and fight again and hopefully redeem ourselves
Q: You guys have a pretty loaded second-half of the season schedule. You play STM and LCA, all those teams. So how do you manage getting your team ready for that?
A: The second-half of the schedule is loaded, but the first half of our schedule is loaded too. I mean we play ten teams that are pretty good and we have to be ready to play physically, mentally every week because our schedule is not very easy.
Q: And lastly, if there is one thing that you want your team to be working on right now and getting better at, what is that?
A: Just consistency, really trying to stack plays on both offense and defense, especially on offense, just trying to stack good play after good play and not have a good play then a negative play. We are just trying to be consistent moving forward and stacking plays.