He was hired to restore a football program to greatness. Then came the pandemic.
Walt Wells has spent his entire professional life preparing to be a college football head coach. But nothing could have prepared him for the curve ball tossed his way shortly after finally achieving that goal.
Wells, 51, was named head coach at Eastern Kentucky in December after spending two years as a quality control assistant at Kentucky under Mark Stoops.
It was a familiar landing spot for Wells: He was an assistant coach at EKU from 1997-2002, then returned to Richmond as an assistant in 2015. The circumstances surrounding the buildup to his first campaign, however, are decidedly unfamiliar.
The coronavirus pandemic has shut down sports across the globe. As a result, Wells finds himself forced to remain unusually distant from his new team at a juncture when first-year head coaches would normally be spending valuable time imprinting their philosophy on and building trust among the young athletes with whom their success is bound.
“You’re trying to get all of your offense, defense and special teams schematics in,” Wells told the Herald-Leader in a phone interview. “Plays are plays, but there are always subtle tweaks and differences … Kids are wondering ‘how is this guy actually teaching it and conversing with me about it? Is he a high-energy guy? Is he a low-energy guy?’ All those things those kids would be getting used to.”
Like other head coaches around the country, Wells sent his players off to spring break last month believing it was one last holiday before the grind toward football season was set to get serious. Then, everything turned on a dime.
“It started when we were on spring break. The following Tuesday we were set to have our first spring practice,” Wells said. “We got no spring practices in at all. We did get all four weeks of our ‘Four Quarter’ programs in, which is lots of conditioning and some team meetings. We got five days worth of installation in, but just classroom stuff and walk-throughs. They got to study up on some of the terminology and go through that, then they went away for spring break. We were going to do more installation when they got back, but, obviously, didn’t get that opportunity.
“Obviously, the welfare of our student-athletes and our staff is what’s most important right now, because this is an animal nobody knows anything about. We’re learning daily.”
Learning to adapt
It’s been an unusual month for Wells as he looks for new ways to build a football program under surreal circumstances.
“The one thing I never dreamed I’d have to worry about as a head coach was, ‘Do we have enough hand sanitizer?’ It’s crazy,” Wells said. “It’s like I told our team and our staff, it is what it is. We’ve got to adapt and adjust, and we’ve got to do it better than anybody else in the (Football Championship Subdivision). That’s been our approach.”
In the absence of in-person instruction Wells has turned to technology like Zoom, a program that facilitates virtual meetings over the internet, and FaceTime to connect with his players.
“I’d never heard of Zoom until three weeks ago and now I’m almost an expert at it,” Wells said. “To sit here and tell you ‘I know every player like I want to,’ that’s not the case. I’m on the phone with them every day. I’m taking anywhere from five to 10 calls a day and trying to get in touch with our guys every day.”
One of Wells’ biggest worries is the physical health of his players, since they aren’t allowed to take advantage of EKU’s strength and conditioning staff or weight room.
“There’s no (exercise) facilities for them to go to, which is a huge concern. Because this is such a developmental time. And that goes for Alabama and Kentucky and whoever as much as it does for us,” Wells said. “(Players) send videos of them running or something but you can’t make it mandatory because what one kid has, another kid might not have … A kid sent me video the other day of him flipping logs, big logs. Then he was squatting with the logs and running up a hill with them. They’re doing good things, but you don’t get 150 of those videos a day. So you’re just hoping the other ones are doing it, too.”
‘Everybody’s world is blown up’
Though he’s certainly concerned about how all of this will affect his inaugural campaign as a head coach, Wells is keeping things in perspective.
“Everybody’s world is blown up right now. My wife is working from home, so me and her are in the house together both working full-time. Everybody’s so used to their routines where you’re both at work and the kids are in school, now there is no routine here,” Wells said. “Just think what these players are going through. You’ve got a guy that just came in as the head coach, you’re starting to get to know him a little bit, you’re starting to get a feel for him. Then, boom, now he’s calling and constantly asking me these questions and checking up on me. It’s hard to build total trust over the phone.
“Some kids come here and, quite frankly, they have more here than they do back home. So we’ve got to make sure that their well-being there is OK. We’ve got to make sure that the ones who stayed here in town that are living off campus, that their well-being is good. The structure in their life has gone away and we’ve got to provide that structure for them and we have to get to know them better and better. You don’t want to overload them. They’re young adults and their world has just been blown up. We have to be able to build that trust with them so they know they’re more important to us than just football. That’s a big thing when you’re in your first year like us.”
Recruiting effect
Recruiting is a year-round job for college coaches and the coronavirus fallout has made that task more difficult. Wells predicts that could lead to a change in the way athletes, as well as coaches, approach decisions.
“I can foresee a trend where you see these guys start to commit quicker now because if they’ve got offers they don’t want to be left out,” Wells said. “Just like with anything, commitment is a tough deal. The struggles will be ongoing with recruiting because everything right now is just by text and phone and evaluations of their Hudl accounts or YouTube accounts.”
Beyond the difficulty of building for the future, Wells regrets that the Colonels might miss out on the chance to add some immediate beef to the roster.
“Here at Eastern we’d probably add some guys from the transfer portal or a junior-college late qualifier,” Wells said. “We don’t get to have those and bring them in now. We don’t even get to go out and see them. It’s unknown territory.
“When it comes down to it you’ve just got to make sure you’re doing the best job of maintaining and building relationships. Because in the end with all this, I think now more than ever that’s gonna be the key. People are going to want to send their kids to somebody that has sold them on what they have to offer and trust them that that’s going to happen … It’s gonna come down to who has done the best job of developing that relationship. That’s how you’re going to see a lot of these guys decide.”
‘I can’t wait’
Like everyone else, Wells is itching for a return to normalcy. For him, that means pining away for an opportunity to step back onto the gridiron. But, at the same time, he knows the precautions preventing him from fully immersing himself in football are necessary right now.
“I can’t wait to get out there and just watch the kids develop. That’s what’s fun anyway, but you really miss it when you’re not a part of it,” Wells said. “But I just want everything to be handled the right way. I’m ready to get back to it but I’m not ready for anybody to die because of it.”
Still, Wells can’t help but dwell on what he’s missing, along with everyone else in the Colonels’ program, in these uncertain times.
“I’m sitting here thinking, ‘tomorrow would have been my eighth practice,’ But I haven’t been on the grass yet where we have a ball and do what we all love to do, which is coach and be around these kids. I don’t have that, but nobody else does, either,” Wells said. “I think each and every person that’s going through this realizes how much they miss what they do. I think the attitudes will be totally different when we get back out there.
“It’s like you’re that kid that has football taken away from them and he goes somewhere else and learns a new lesson. Why does this kid transfer here and becomes a good player when he wasn’t there? Well, he realizes when something was taken away from him what he’s missing. That’s what is going to happen to everybody involved in this. I can’t wait to get on the field.”
2020 EKU football schedule
(Home games in all capital letters)
Sept. 5: WESTERN CAROLINA
Sept. 12: At West Virginia
Sept. 19: At Youngstown St.
Sept. 26: At Tennessee Tech
Oct. 3: TENNESSEE MARTIN
Oct. 10: At Austin Peay
Oct. 17: EASTERN ILLINOIS
Oct. 31: At Jacksonville St.
Nov. 7: MURRAY ST.
Nov. 14: At Southeast Missouri
Nov. 21: TENNESSEE ST.
