After a previous season filled with struggles and success, head football coach Marc Bindel enters the new school year with high expectations. The Rider Chronicle sat down with Bindel to discuss the pressures and challenges of running a football team. 

Q: What are your expectations for this year? 

A: I think that we have a chance to have a really good team as long as we don’t get ahead of ourselves. If we try to look down the road and think about what’s gonna happen two, three, four, five rounds of the playoffs, then I don’t think we’ll have as good as a team as if we just focus on one game at a time and try to be just one at the end of the week so I expect big things as long as we maintain our focus.  

Q: Last year, Rider had an amazing season. Do you think there is more pressure from the community this year compared to previous years due to that? 

A: No, I don’t think so. I think the community every year expects us to have a good football team and that’s the expectation of playing at Rider is that you’re gonna have a good team, but I think the most pressure comes from ourselves, the coaches and the players. We expect to have a good team and that’s what we want because we put ourselves in that position.  

Q: The team got off to a bad start the previous season; how has that influenced going into this year? 

A: We didn’t start great (last year). I think as a coach and staff, we were learning who our players were and we went through some injuries and the teams that we played beat us. I think that this year we’re not taking anybody for granted. We’re taking the underdog approach to every game and we’re also trying to manage our players better in practice; trying to keep them healthy going into the game and things like that. 

Up and at ‘em for Day 2. Let’s go men!!! pic.twitter.com/UzIiuni2bY

— Marc Bindel (@CoachBindel) August 13, 2019

Q: Has the atmosphere from the team changed from last year? 

A: Yeah, every team’s different. I mean, last year we had a strong group of vocal seniors. Well they were non-vocal; they lead by example. This year, I think our seniors are a little more vocal. We have some strong junior leaders as well and so the makeup is different, but I think at the end of the day, everyone wants to be competitive and they want to win. 

Q: What guys have impressed you over the past year going into the new season? 

A: A guy that sticks out is Mason Conner; he worked really hard. He kinda wants to put himself in position to play on both sides of the ball. The plan was to start him on defense, but he wants to make an impact offensively as well. Tre Byrd has really worked hard to get stronger and faster. He had a good season last year, but he wants to take the next step. Our offensive line in general. I think our o-line and d-line kinda set the tone for the whole team and how physical they’re going to be. I think the d-line has really got our offensive line playing some good football.  

Q: What has been your greatest struggle coaching here and how did you overcome it?

A: My greatest struggle in coaching here is that a lot of time I let in outside noise like things people put on social media or what somebody might write in the papers. When they say negative things about me or the team… I let that bother me and over time, the longer I’ve been a head coach, I’ve really kinda ignored that and I just kinda focus on the people who are closest to me, that know me and our coaching staff well and know our players. I block out all that noise now, and it took me a while to get to that point before I could do that.