Phil Longo, 'Luckily, We haven't Had to Lean on Parents to Push Our Athletes'

UNC football offensive coordinator, Phil Longo, highlights the importance of a family atmosphere to Carolina Football and not needing parents to push their kids, 'We have the leadership.'

All athletic programs value the significance of parents during their recruitment of a student-athlete. Parents provide stability, reassurance, and support their athletesin making one of the toughest decisions in their life; when recruiting athletes, you're signing on their family as well. 

No one could've predicted a global pandemic at the start of 2020, especially one that crippled the entire world and forced it into impossible situations. Losing jobs, stay at home orders and kids not being able to attend school, have all weighed on parents, and at a time they're worried about taking care of the family, the added involvement in staying on top of active athletes can also be an added worry.

Offensive Coordinator, Phil Longo, highlighted the importance of parents assisting in making sure players are staying on top of their game. Since the dismissal of school, college coaches cannot enforce workouts nor watch their players as they workout; they can only showcase and suggest exercises. Coaches can't be the enforcers or the physical push their athletes need, so they rely on parents to fill their shoes. But luckily for this Carolina program, Longo hasn't felt the need to overly involve parents, 'We have a high character locker room'.

"Yeah, that's an interesting question, that's a good one though. Parental involvement is the same that it always is, but we're emphasizing it more." 

"I always say in the offense; we have the ability to do whatever we need to do in the offense to win ball games. But every year for one year to the next, you emphasize a different area. If a quarterback can run, you run him more if we can go deep with speed, then we might do that more, but it all exists in the plan. We just emphasize what works for our players the most."

"So when I'm addressing the parental questions, the parents, they're in the development plan for their sons in our pregame; one because Mack Brown includes the families and he preaches family all the time, and I'm not saying I've never been anywhere that doesn't incorporate the family or have a family-type atmosphere, but I've never been anywhere where it's addressed so often, and it legitimately is that way every single day that we're in the office. We include mom and dad anytime there's something to address with their son, with the exception of playing time."

"So the reason I brought up the emphasis issue with the offense right now because we don't see them face to face, we're not looking at them eye to eye, we cant communicate With them in person, so we have emphasized the role of the parents in this whole process now more than ever, and more now than I ever included them in my career because I never been through a quarantine; as most of us haven't."

"I've talked to Mr. and Mrs. Copenhaver just as the one example more in the last couple weeks than I have since I recruited their son. And they are a lot more involved with making sure their son is taking the online classes and doing the workouts. Now the good thing is we haven't needed parental help to push kids to do something they're supposed to be doing because we have such a high character locker room right now."

"We have a lot of leadership; situations like this have the tendency to reveal who you're really working with, and I think right now, we are finding out who are some of the true leaders in our locker room. We're finding out the real workers are and who will do things without us looking, and in a few instances where that's in question, parents and family members have played a much bigger role."