River Hill football coach Brian Van Deusen has guided the Hawks to unprecedented success the past three seasons, as his team has won a pubic school-record 41 games since 2006. The team’s lone defeat during that span was to Friendly in the Class 3A final in 2006. Van Deusen, who is entering his 10th season at the Clarksville school, is 89-18 – an .831 winning percentage. The Hawks have made the playoffs after winning the Howard County title in each of the past six seasons under the guidance of Van Deusen, a former three-sport athlete at nearby Atholton High and a record-setting quarterback at McDaniel College in Westminster. Brian, 35, recently revealed to Coaches Aid.com how he’s turned a school that opened in 1996 into one of state’s most successful programs.
River Hill football coach Brian Van Deusen has led his team to consecutive Class 2A titles. (Photo by Nancy Hostetler)
Coaches Aid: How have you turned a mediocre team into just the second Howard County team to win consecutive state titles?
Van Deusen: I think there are a couple of reasons, with the first being the consistency in the coaching staff. Tom Gruneberg , Lance Evans and Todd Martin have increased the expectations in the offseason, increasing the workload to working out four days a week. We’re putting in the work in the weight room, but also working on agility and speed – and our kids have really bought into it the past few years. Now, we are bigger, stronger and faster. The other part is we have an offensive and defensive philosophy that forces teams to adjust their personnel. We’ve run a 3-5 defense for the past five or six years because it suits are kids. We don’t always have the biggest kids, but we have ones who are fast and athletic.
CA: How do you handle the expectations of players and parents after winning consecutive state titles and losing just once in three years?
VD: We don’t talk about the streaks at all. Our motto right now is: Make yourself better, bigger, stronger and faster. If everyone does that, we’ll be in great shape. We’re not the New England Patriots who went 16-0 a few years ago. We coach teenagers and we don’t want them looking ahead at the state championship game right now. We want them focused on getting better every week. The expectations are there. It’s not like we went from 5-5 to 14-0 and a state title. For the past five or six years, we’ve taken one step further than the previous year. We’ve gone to 5-5 to 7-3 to 9-1 to 10-0 to making the playoffs and losing in the first round to going one round further the next year to finally winning the state title after losing in the championship game the year before.
CA: What aspect of your program makes you the most proud?
VD: That we’ve done it the right way. We have a system and our kids have bought into the system and they are doing it the right way, We’re not out there recruiting. We have kids all the time call our coaches and say they want to play at River Hill. Our response: We tell them they need to buy a house and move into our district. It’s not like it is at Dunbar where if you live in Baltimore City you can legally go there. We have Good Counsel just down the road and they try to recruit our kids. But with the success we have, the kids in our district want to come to our River Hill and be a part of what we’ve built here.
CA: What’s your coaching philosophy?
VD: I want to improve the kids’ fundamental skills. It’s basically that I’m a teacher on the field, showing them how to take the proper steps at the snap of the ball to the proper techniques on how to play the game. My goal is to just make each one of my players a better football player every year. We have smart players here at River Hill. They can handle the adjustments we give them. We just want to improve their character and leadership and make sure they are thriving in the classroom. Oh, and obviously, we want to win some football games, too.
CA: You were 25 years old and a few years out of college when you became head coach at River Hill, taking over for your father, Don. How have you matured as a head coach?
VD: The big thing is that I have great assistants and we all have one thing in common: We always are trying to learn and find new things to make us better. I’m an offensive guy, and I really enjoy going to coaching clinics at colleges or ones put on by Nike. I try to go to three or four a year. But the biggest difference now is that I’m being asked to speak at the clinics. I’m up there in front of 40 or 50 coaches and talking to them about what we’ve done at River Hill. I’ve also learned how technology has really made an impact in this game. You have electronic scouting and video editing that breaks down a team’s tendencies and probabilities. The way you can get a statistical breakdown of a team during the week leading up to the game has really changed the way you prepare for a team.
CA: River Hill’s 41 victories during a three-year period are the most in Maryland public school history. You’ve won consecutive state titles and six straight county titles. How are you savoring a period of success that the vast majority of coaches will never experience?
VD: I’m probably not savoring it as much as I should. I’ve enjoyed winning a state title for the few weeks after it happens, but then it’s January and you start all over again. But I do look back and think about how we went 14-0. But I look at it in depth: Do you know that we never trailed last year? We played 56 quarters and never trailed. How many times does that happen? The year before we didn’t trail in the first 13 games we played – not once? For years, River Hill was known as a soccer school and the rap on Howard County was that it couldn’t win in football. I grew up in Howard County, so it makes it more special when you knock off teams from Prince George’s County like Douglass and Gwynn Park and win state titles. It shows the rest of the state that there’s some great football being played here in our county.
River Hill coach Brian Van Deusen, right, attributes, from left, the loyalty of assistants Lance Evans, Tom Gruneberg and Todd Martin for giving River Hill's players a stable and talented coaching staff. (Photo by Nancy Hostetler)
CA: From where do you draw your inspiration?
VD: My whole staff and I just love the game of football. We want to be the best coaches we can be. We obviously love high school football, but we love the college game and we’re big Ravens fans. We just want to know our team always is getting better. Last year was a great example. Look, there’s always going to be a few games on your schedule that you know will be blowouts. So that’s when we really worked on aspects of the game we knew we’d need to do well to advance in the playoffs, like being really good at the short passing game. The great thing about last year was we ran through the county and then when we got to the state championship game, we couldn’t use our best player, Michael Campanaro, on offense because he was hurt. But then you look up at the scoreboard against Eastern Tech and we’re up, 31-0. That shows that we improved as team during the course of the season.
CA: Your house is on fire. Your wife, Melissa, and infant daughter, Peyton, are safe. Your wallet is in your pocket. You have time to grab one item as you run out of the house. What do you take?
VD: I take my two state championship rings. They are really special to me because they represent so much hard work.
CA: How does being a math teacher make you a better coach and how does being a coach make you a better math teacher?
VD: With math, it’s the analytical mindset that helps me be a better coach. With football, so much of it is about statistics, tendencies and finding the right percentages. It helps me scout the opponent for the week. As a teacher, I want to carry the state title-winning mentality over to the classroom and make sure all of my students are working hard to be the best they can be. I think both jobs really come down to preparation. Being a math teacher and football coach are all about teaching. I have practice plans just as I have lesson plans. A lot about success is making sure you are prepared to achieve it.
CA: How do you think your players would describe you as a coach?
VD: Hopefully, they’d say that I was a good teacher who made them better football players, taught them the game and was a good role model. Look, my assistant coaches and I are not old school. We aren’t the kind of coaches who yell at kids and get in their faces. We think it’s more productive if we build a positive environment. I’ve had players now who are two or three years out of college who come back and talk to me and tell me what’s going on in their lives, which means a lot to me.
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