Panthers’ coach will direct North team

The off-season just got a little shorter for Powell High School head football coach Jim Stringer. After directing the Panthers to a 9-2 season and 3A state championship finish, Stringer was notified earlier this week that he had been selected to be the head coach for the North team in this summer’s Wyoming Shrine Bowl.

“It’s an honor to be chosen,” said Stringer, who will be making his third appearance on the sidelines of the all-star football contest. “After winning the state title, you receive notes and congratulations from all around, and those are special. This is more important to me, though, because this is a personal deal. This is your peers and other coaches choosing you and voting you in.”

Balloting for Shrine Bowl head coaches begins in early November as coaches from each high school are asked to submit nominations. Those submissions then get pared down, typically to the top two or three vote recipients in both the north and the south. Coaches then vote from those options for whom they would like to see coach the teams.

This will be Stringer’s second time serving as the head coach for the North squad. He was also selected as the head coach following the Panthers’ last state championship, serving as the head coach for the 2007 summer classic. Stringer also served as an assistant for the 2006 game.

The process for gearing up for the game is already underway. Stringer spent part of this week sending emails and making phone calls to other coaches around the state in an effort to form his coaching staff for the game.

“That’s part of the fun and one of the benefits to receiving an honor like this,” Stringer said. “You have the opportunity to be around and coach with some of the state’s other top coaches and observe what they do in terms of instruction, formatting practices and things like that. It’s a chance to pick some things up and learn.”

Stringer will select one coach from each of the other classification levels of football to form his assistant coaching staff for the Shrine Bowl. He will also be allowed to select one member of the Powell High School coaching staff to assist at the game.

Ideally, he’d like to have that staff assembled by the end of the holiday break.

“Once that’s done, then we sit down and select the team,” Stringer said. “You have to narrow those selections down early because you’re asking kids and their families to make a week-long commitment in the summer and you want to give them as much notice as possible.”

That week is always a hectic one as the state’s top seniors come together as teammates and, in the space of seven days, learn offensive and defensive packages that, in many cases, are brand new to them.

“In a lot of ways, it’s like getting ready for the first game of the season,” Stringer said. “Except, you only have one week to prepare instead of two.”

It’s a task that’s made easier, Stringer acknowledged, due to players’ familiarity with the sport and their level of dedication.

“Most of the kids you’re working with are all-conference and all-state types, so they already have a deep understanding of the sport of football,” Stringer said. “They’re already really accomplished kids. The challenge is just getting them used to what, for many, might be a new system or a new way of doing things.”

In that area, Stringer will lean heavily on his prior Shrine Bowl experience.

“The biggest thing I’ve found is keeping the terminology simple,” Stringer said. “If things get too complex or your terminology gets too complex, you risk having kids get lost.”

Powell fans planning to watch the game though might be surprised to see the North team running an offense or defense quite foreign to what they’re accustomed to seeing from the Panthers.

“Like anything, it depends on the personnel,” Stringer said of the choice of systems. “Once we know who we have and look and see what sort of offense they operate best in and what they’re familiar with, that will help shape what we do. You want to have a plan, but you also want to adapt it to what you’ve got on the field.”

Stringer should have plenty of options available. In addition to players from his own state championship team, Stringer will also be free to select players from other northern Wyoming rosters, including the 2A state champions, Lovell, and the 4A state champs, Sheridan. The roster of the latter includes Wyoming Gatorade Player of the Year Jordan Roberts, who rushed for 2,688 yards and 38 touchdowns this past season.

While football will take a central focus for the week, Stringer is quick to note the outcome isn’t the important thing.

“Ultimately, the win or the loss isn’t what’s most important out of the experience,” Stringer said. “The biggest thing is that you’re helping to raise money for a good cause.”

The Shrine Bowl serves as a fundraiser for the nationwide network of Shriners Hospitals for Children, an organization of 22 facilities that provide no-cost orthopaedic and burn care for children age 18 and under in a family-centered environment. Since 1974, the Wyoming Shrine Bowl has raised more than $425,000 for the cause.

“One of the days we’re together as a team is spent going to Utah to actually visit with the children in their hospital over there,” Stringer said. “That’s always a touching time. You see big burly linemen walking out of there misty eyed from the experience.”

The 2012 Wyoming Shrine Bowl will take place June 9, 2012, at Natrona County High School Stadium in Casper.