Stearns Football Coach Cody Herring on 8-Man Football and Millinocket's First Title Since 1998

Stearns head coach Cody Herring joins the show from Millinocket. Last fall the Minutemen beat Old Orchard Beach 20-18 for the 8-man small school state championship, the program's first title since 1998. The conversation covers that title game, how to follow it up, 8-man football in a 136-student school, refereeing basketball, and a guest who brought his own questions to ask.

In this episode:

• Coming back as defending champions, and why this week's game with Orono, which along with Stearns has represented the league for four years running, is a good early test
• Keeping a title team hungry: sticking to routine, and having players who buy in
• Why an early regular-season loss to Old Orchard Beach, in a game Stearns led at halftime, gave the team the belief it needed for the rematch in the state final
• The game plan against Old Orchard Beach: accept the short gains, take away the big plays, and use an aggressive defense's speed against it
• The two-point conversions that decided the state final, and why goal-line work and special teams get practice time every week
• What the title meant to Millinocket: a tour of businesses from Medway to Millinocket, an alumni network that stays close, and a gold ball that has to stay out of reach of a 3-year-old with big plans for it
• Why Stearns is committed to 8-man, from second grade through high school, and doesn't plan to go back to 11-man
• Turning NFL and college plays into 8-man plays: a notebook, a game clock time stamp, and taking three players out to see whether the idea still works
• Officiating basketball in the winter and how it changes his approach to working with officials on the football sideline
• The Caribou–Biddeford girls state final he worked, and a Fort Kent–Maranacook boys state game
• What he'd do in charge of the MPA for a day: a longer football preseason, the hands-off period moved to July, and a post-state-final tournament of basketball champions from every class

The guest asks the questions:

• Favorite current tournament venue: the Augusta Civic Center
• Best tournament game seen in person: the Falmouth–Noble regional final
• Best sideline story: a coach who pulled off his headset, said "watch this," called a touchdown and walked away with a fist bump
• Movie of the year: Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie, now on Hulu, with honorable mention to Coyote vs. Acme
• A Mid Coast tournament story from the 1990s: the time Dale Landrith player sat in the Bangor section at a Bangor–Medomak Valley game

Also in the intro:

• Volleyball is on the scoreboard now. Volleyball rankings need set scores, not just 3-0 or 3-1, so ask coaches and fans in your volleyball community to enter the full set scores.

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