By: Nate Calvin

After five seasons of guiding the Evergreen Vikings football program, Aaron Schmidt recently announced his decision to resign at the team banquet.

“After much prayer and with a broken heart my family and I have decided that I will be resigning as the head football coach at Evergreen High School”, said Schmidt as he addressed his team and their families.

“I am going to miss watching film, creating practice plans, going to 6am morning lifts, cooking breakfast for our team, creating workout plans, holding staff meetings, going to coaching clinics, drawing up offensive and defensive schemes, meeting with players, planning team activities, holding youth camps, running a youth program, planning community service opportunities and sitting up in the middle of the night trying to figure out the ways to give our kids the best opportunity possible to be successful.”

“But it’s time for me to spend that time with my family”, Schmidt continued.

“I have put my heart and soul into every player, EVERY PLAYER, in this program over the last five years. Am I a passionate person? You bet I am. You know why?  Because I am passionate about what I do and about your kids,” said Schmidt.

“I can promise you that I have thought individually about each and every kid that has played for me and tried to give each kid the best experience possible. I tried to teach our kids the benefits of hard work, teamwork, accountability, responsibility, facing adversity, character, loyalty, discipline and leadership.”

“I want to say Thank You to the people in the community that have been supportive and appreciative of myself and my coaching staff. You have no idea of the gratitude I have for a kind and encouraging word. No matter how little it seemed to you, I appreciated it more than you can possibly know. So, thank you.”

“When it comes down to it, I’m just a guy who wanted to help the kids in this community the best way I know how, coaching football. I loved and cared about this program and the kids in it to the best of my ability every single day.”

“And I think I can speak for all the coaches in saying we don’t do it for the money, we do it because we care about your kids.  We don’t do it for our own success, we do it because we want to see your kids succeed and that’s all I ever wanted”, said Schmidt in closing.

Schmidt was 17-33 in his five seasons, including this year’s squad that went 3-7 overall and 1-6 in the NWOAL. Schmidt plans on to continue teaching at Evergreen.

Nate can be reached at sports@thevillagereporter.com

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