A long time ago, when the grass on the field was real and the game ball was leather, high-school football was a simple affair.
You ran the ball. You kicked the ball. You tackled the ball-carrier.
Thirty-two years later, Cochrane High School Cobras football coach Bruce O’Neil can still be found in a huddle of kids, teaching them about life on, and off, the gridiron.
“Bruce is kind of the legend of the coaches in Cochrane,” says former player Jeff Avery, who graduated from the Cochrane program so long ago he now coaches his son with the Cochrane Lions bantam football team. Avery was at Cobras spring camp June 5, helping O’Neil and other coaches put the players through their paces.
“I’ve learned a heck of a lot from him.”
Fortunately, for guys like Avery and the hundreds who’ve followed, they weren’t hiring in Calgary all those years ago.
“I’m so fortunate to land at this school,” O’Neil relates, as kids pound blocking sleds and run pass patterns on the field behind him. “I didn’t even want to teach here. I wanted to teach in Calgary. But I didn’t get hired there. I got hired here.
“Best thing that ever happened.”
So the physical-education teacher landed in Cochrane in 1981 and started coaching football after school.
“In 1985, that’s when we finally got it together,” he recalls. “We went to Springbank and we beat them 62-0. And we’d probably only scored 62 points a season before then.
“Everything came together. We learned how to coach. Ever since then, it took off from there.”
The Cobras won provincial titles in 1986 and ’87, and have won at least one provincial championship in each of the four decades O’Neil has been guiding the program (11 total at Tier 2 and Tier 3 levels), including their current Alberta Schools Athletic Association Tier 3 provincial title.
Over that time, the 57-year-old has ensured the team’s direction has kept pace with the game.
“We throw the ball now,” he observes. “For the first 10 years, we ran the ball. We might have thrown the ball 50 times a season. That’s what really changed.”
The addition of former University of Calgary quarterback Rob McNab to the Cobra coaching ranks 22 years ago may have had something to do with that. And, as the Dean of the defence, O’Neil has moved the X’s and O’s on the chalkboard around to keep the competition guessing.
“I just ran a 44 defence for 20 years,” he says of his standard defensive set of four linemen, four linebackers and four defensive backs. “I changed that up to different defences. Now, down and distance dictate what we’re going to do.
“We will adjust according to who we’re playing. We always scout our opponents.”
As the level of coaching has advanced – scouting opponents, spring training camps and video-recording were not necessities like they are today – so have the players.
“Kids are kids. But the preparation is so much more now,” he observes. “The kids are faster, stronger, because they train. They train year-round.”
And from 1981 to last year’s grads many, like Avery, return to the field to help with training camp.
“Very gratifying,” O’Neil says. “We’re lucky to have our program. We’re very fortunate.”
Once a Cobra, always a Cobra.
“It’s awesome to be able to come back and help him,” Avery surmises. “Kind of where it all began for me. He’s taught me a lot. More about life than football. He’s just one of those guys who will spend as much time as you need with him.”
