The West Greene football team will be under new leadership this fall, but the face roaming the sidelines will be a familiar one to many Buffalo fans. On Tuesday the school announced that Evan Monroe has become the program’s seventh head coach.
Monroe is a 2011 West Greene graduate, and has spent the last five years coaching at West Greene Middle. This will be his first high school head coaching job, but he has been the head coach at the middle school for the last three years.
“I went to West Greene and I have a lot of pride in the community,” Monroe said. “I love the community and I love West Greene. When the opportunity knocks sometimes you just have to answer the call. I’m really excited about this opportunity.”
Monroe takes the job with a passion for West Greene football, and he is hopeful that his passion inspires the community to get behind the team that went 8-3 a year ago as they move into a new look Region 1-2A.
“I think anytime you have someone that went to the school leading the program you get some instant buy in from the community,” Monroe said. “I know how special this football team is to the West Greene community. I know what it takes to win here. My freshman year we were 1-9 and by my senior year were 7-4. I was here last year when we had the season we did. I’m not somebody from out of town who is going to come in and blow smoke up their hind ends. I know what we need to do to win here, and we are going to do what it takes to win.”
As far as scheme goes, Buffalo fans should not expect a lot of changes. Monroe likes the system coach Scotty Verran ran before he resigned this offseason, and he has been running the same system with the same terminology at West Greene Middle. He hopes that makes the transition a little bit easier on both him and the players as they try to hit the ground the running going into summer workouts.
The first thing Monroe wants to focus on as he takes over the Buffaloes is the strength program. He feels like that will be a foundation for the program, and the squad will spend most of the summer focused on getting stronger.
“We have to get in the weight room, and I have been coming over to the high since January to help with workouts,” Monroe said. “But I still think strength is an area that we are behind on. It may be a cliché, but we have to get stronger and faster. I do think if we can get in the weight room, and push ourselves and learn to compete, we’ll turn the corner quick.”
The next step for Monroe will be getting his players to buy in to being committed to winning. He wants to build the program with an “all in” attitude where the players understand what it takes to be successful. In large part that is showing everyday committed to getting better.
“The biggest thing we have to establish from the start, is that we have to be all in,” Monroe said. “There is no half-here, half-there. It has to be all in all the time. If you look at any successful program that type of mentality is what helps them win. Successful teams don’t have problems with attendance, successful teams don’t halfway do something. You have to jump in with both feet.”
Prior to joining West Greene Middle Monroe spent two years at Greeneville Middle coaching football and track.
Monroe will begin his head coaching tenure on August 18 against North Greene. The Buffaloes will have a new-look schedule this year as they move from Class 3A to Class 2A. Their new region foes are South Greene, Cumberland Gap, Happy Valley, Hampton and Eagleton. Nonconference foes will be Chuckey-Doak, North Greene, Cloudland, Sullivan East and Unicoi County.
