Last year the hints were there for young coach Pooya Dourandish that he and his friends, all in their mid-20s, would soon be put in charge of all the football teams at West Vancouver secondary.
Coach Shawn Anderson took over the team in dire circumstances in 2010. He was named the head coach in August, just a couple of weeks before the season was about to start, and was shocked by what he saw at the first practice. More precisely, he was shocked by what he didn’t see: players.
“I was told we were going to have 20 guys there so I got all excited,” recalls Anderson. Except there weren’t 20 senior players at the practice. There were two.
Anderson scraped together a lineup for the first few games but after a blowout loss against Carson Graham, he was left with just 12 healthy bodies and was forced to make the difficult decision to pull the plug on the season.
From that low point, however, the former Handsworth quarterback – he led the Royals to a provincial title in 1996 – re-built the Highlanders program, turning it back into a well-regarded team with big rosters and a collection of recent grads, including Dourandish, brought back to help coach.
But with family duties calling – he and his wife Alex have a two-year-old child and another one due in November – Anderson began mulling over the possibility of turning the team over to the young guns.
“I needed to take a step back,” he says. “My family is very important to me and I’ve put a lot of pressure on my wife over the last five years of coaching. (Coaching) is a full-time job, in my opinion, in addition to teaching.”
Now all that was left was to let 25-year-old Dourandish know that he was now the head coach of a senior high school football team.
“He had jokingly talked about it for the whole year before,” Dourandish recalls. But when the time came following the 2014 season, it was no joke.
“OK, you guys are doing it,” Anderson told Dourandish and his collection of young coach friends. Dourandish was to be the head coach with former West Van teammate Andrew Cho and three Sentinel grads – Marcus Tan and brothers Nic and Mitch Shuster – acting as assistants. Dourandish’s best friend, fellow West Van 2008 grad Sean Holler, was to take over the junior team, a squad that Anderson had also been coaching.
Dourandish was nervous.
“I’m not young, but I’m pretty young in coaching terms,” he says, adding that he has felt the age gap when he attended meetings with other head coaches who are mostly older teachers. His nervousness, however, was topped by his excitement. “It’s always nice to have someone trust you enough to hand over their baby. (Shawn) helped grow the program and then just handed over the keys.”
The switch has gone smoothly. The Highlanders dropped their opening game 8-0 against Carson Graham Saturday but, more importantly for the program, they fielded a strong roster of more than 25 senior players. The junior team is in even better shape, boasting a roster of nearly 40 players.
Anderson, who still acts as the offensive co-ordinator for the junior team and overall co-ordinator for the West Van football program, has been happy to see the young coaches taking such good care of his baby.
“I think it’s amazing. I really do. I know what a challenge it is,” he says. “They’ve all taken on leadership roles. They’re really coaching. They’re practice planning, they’re breaking down film, they’re doing the work of a coach instead of just supporting at practice.”
Anderson is also impressed by how the coaches have shaken up their lives to fit the awkward 3-5 p.m. daily practice time into their lives.
“That’s a huge commitment and I hope that our players understand that,” he says.
Holler, the junior coach, went so far as to request early morning shifts at work so he could make it to practice each afternoon.
“You’re committing to start work at 5 a.m. and come here to practice?” says Anderson. “That’s amazing.”
Dourandish credits Anderson with helping him learn the organizational skills needed when you’re in charge of every last detail.
“(It’s) stressful at times, because he loves to be very well prepared,” Dourandish says with a laugh. “The toughest thing would be dealing with everything…. You get home from a game and have to upload the film, start planning right away, co-ordinate with your coaches what you want to do that week. It’s a little bit more challenging than just going out there and yelling at kids.”
Anderson admits, however, that he’s learned a few things himself from his more laid-back protégé.
“I’m a (Handsworth head coach) Jay Prepchuk disciple – there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. Whereas Pooya is a bit more collaborative with the players,” he says. “The players really respect Pooya for his commitment to the program and for his temperament. He’s a laid-back kind of guy. They haven’t had that. I’m not super laid-back. I’m learning from Pooya that it’s OK to have fun and roll with what’s going on. He does such a great job of that.
“He’s a good guy, he’s a fun guy. He’s out in the world. He drives a big truck and he listens to county music. That’s the kind of guy he is and the kids kind of relate to that. He’s not young like them. He’s not their friend, but they can relate to him a bit more than the cranky old guy that I’m becoming.”
Dourandish first started coaching in Grade 11 after a torn ACL put him on the sidelines. Instead of rueing his bad luck, he signed up to help with the Grade 8 team.
“No coaching, really, just kind of being there and holding stuff for people,” he says with a laugh. “You get a look at what the game looks like from the other side. I don’t know – it just hooked me.”
Now that he’s a head coach, the hooks are in him even deeper.
“The dream is to coach football and get paid for it,” he says. “You understand that you maybe live in the wrong country for that. But if I can be involved in coaching for the rest of my life, I’d be a very happy person.”
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The Highlanders will host the Windsor Dukes in their home opener this Friday. Kickoff is 3:45 p.m. at West Vancouver secondary.
