Tallman hopes to get Springfield football back on track

Springfield has won two football games in the last two years. The player turnout has been low and the fan participation dissipating.
http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20120330/SPORTS02/703309913

Published March 30, 2012 in the Rutland Herald
Tallman hopes to get Springfield football back on track

By POODY WALSH
Correspondent

SPRINGFIELD — Springfield has won two football games in the last two years. The player turnout has been low and the fan participation dissipating. So the question is, can the football fortunes in a town just three years removed from a state championship be turned around? If that question is directed at the recently named head football coach, Kevin Tallman, there is never a doubt.

“We can be competitive in Division II by blocking, tackling and football intelligence,” said Tallman, who considers football second in importance only to breathing.

Tallman, 51, has been around the football block. He has been a head coach previously at Fall Mountain and had assistant jobs at Stevens, Hanover, John Stark, a regional school in Weare, N.H., and most recently the assistant head football coach at Springfield the past two years.

His current occupation is a hospitality and lodging teacher at the Sugar River Technical Center in Claremont, N.H. However, that job does not wake him up at 3:30 in the morning.

It’s football.

“I have a notebook next to my bed and the other day I woke up at 3:30 and just had to write down what was on my mind,” he said.

So when the call came a few days ago that he had been chosen as the next varsity football coach in Springfield, it was like a 5-year-old coming down the stairs on Christmas morning. Several days later he was still smiling.

Tallman does not know who the other candidates for the job were, but they certainly could not have been prepared like he was for the interview process. He showed up with a blue folder containing material that pretty much described what he has been doing the last 51 years. However, there were also several other brochures explaining training, philosophy, building blocks and five pages entitled: The Total Program: Cosmos Football.

While getting the job was a relief for Tallman, the hardest part is yet to come. He knows he has to get the program off its knees and back in the race. He knows the first thing he has to do is get the numbers up.

“Last year there were just 32 players in the whole school playing football and that led to a situation where there were just too many going both way,” Tallman said. “We didn’t score much so the defense was on the field for too many plays. You just can’t win games when the defense is on the field too much.

“We were in a lot of games, but we just wilted in the second half,” Tallman said. “Somehow we have to get away from that type of football. We have to do more platooning.”

And there may be help along the way. Twenty-five of those 32 players from a year ago are coming back and 28 freshmen have signed up.

“I have a passion to get the train back on the right track,” he said.

To help him with the reconstruction of the program he has surrounded himself with what he thinks is an outstanding staff. He has brought over a couple of men from his Stevens days in Keith Duford and Nate Emerson, and retained John Beeman. He will add one more assistant. Duford could be a key as he was a successful middle school coach in Claremont and his strength is from the technical angle.

Tallman also knows that there is more to the game than blocking and tackling.

“First we want to make it fun and then we want the sport to make a difference in people’s lives,” he said. “These players need to know we care about them and we want them to enjoy the experience.”