RIDLEY TWP. >> Before the Ridley ball-carrier could get to the next level after finding space around right tackle, Dave Wood’s shrill whistle brought the drill to a halt. What came next was what you’d expect from a high school football practice — a correction of several points of scheme, of how to read a play, of effort, delivered with measured vehemence. But then Wood added the coda that he hopes will trigger the most change this fall.
“We don’t do that anymore here,” Wood said. “Aren’t you tired of doing things that way?”
Wood’s task as Ridley’s new football coach is subject to your viewing lens. It’s either a jewel of a job in what can be, at its pinnacle, one of the most electric atmospheres in Southeastern Pennsylvania football, or it’s an unenviable level of scrutiny from hundreds of discerning coaches in the stands.
Wood is very certain as to where he falls on that continuum, calling Ridley the “gold standard” of Delco high school football, dating to his days as a Penn Wood All-Delco in the mid-1980s while Matt Blundin was the star du jour at Ridley. And he’s secure in the goals he harbors this season in returning to the high school game after nearly a quarter century in the college coaching ranks.
“To me, as a coach, that’s what you want,” Wood said after a recent practice. “To me, you want someone that cares about the program. You’re going to have your Saturday morning quarterbacks questioning everything you want, but to me, that’s the fun of it. To me, that’s the challenge because if you were at a high school situation where no one came, no one complained about what you were doing, then no one cares.”
Wood’s assumption of the helm at Ridley posits the Green Raiders as a sleeping giant, one that Dennis Decker piloted to a 74-24 record over seven seasons before stepping down last December. But Ridley last won a playoff game in 2012, a drought unacceptable for the tastes of Green Raider faithful.
The remedy was hiring Wood, who’ll seek to meld the extremes of perspectives into a coherent whole. He’s not an alumnus like Decker, but he’s intimately familiar with the Delco scene, where he’s recruited for years. He lacks high school experience, but he’s coached in various capacities at Lehigh, Widener and Penn for over two decades. Plus he’s recruited a large coaching staff that includes Ridley stalwarts and outsiders, including former Kennett head coach and Garnet Valley offensive coordinator Scott Green to run the offense, and assistants from the Garnet Valley district where he lives, to introduce fresh ideas.
One of those is Kansas City Chiefs and Ridley High alum Joe Valerio, master motivator for Garnet Valley’s linemen for a long time.
Wood’s primary approach is to return Ridley football to centrality within a community longing for the glory days, but he’ll do it with a very un-Ridley-like triple-option offense that he knows will ruffle some feathers but will produce results.
Wood, who was the linebackers coach at Penn from 2010-15 after seven seasons as Widener’s head man, inherits a quarterback in Cade Stratton who enjoyed success in the pocket-passer role last year, and a 1,000-yard back in Malik Young. He’ll have to adjust some pieces to the new systems, including a 3-4 defense. But with 34 seniors, decent size up front and a talented linebacking corps that should adapt well to his installment of defensive principles, he has the raw materials to mold.
What’s most vital, though, is the shift in Wood’s mentality that he hopes to pass on to his charges. Even at the Division I-AA or Division III college level, he rarely mentored finished products on the field. They were further along in their development than high schoolers, but the end goal was seldom pro football.
At Ridley, Wood is starting at square one with most, getting underclassmen into the weight room or helping them balance academics and athletics for the first time. Instead of teaching the granular technicalities of scheme and situation, he’s instilling the basics of footwork, stance, how to tackle, etc.
But that challenge drew Wood to Ridley; it’s an onus that many longtime college coaches may be unwilling to assume.
“When it’s all said and done, football’s football, kids are kids and we’re just trying to change the culture a little bit,” Wood said. “Football, like it’s always been at Ridley, has always been very, very important. We’ve just got to make sure the kids totally understand that that comes back. And I think that is what’s been lost the last few years.”
Here’s a look at what Ridley has to face this year…
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Ridley High School first year coach Coach Wood speaks to players following practice. Wood was linebackers coach at the University of Pennsylvania since 2010, before that he was Head Coach at Widener University from 2003-2009. (Pete Bannan – Digital First Media)
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