Plainsmen excited about new coach

New Evergreen football coach Charles Anthony, a former player at UNLV, instructs his players during the Plainsmen’s spring practices. (Steven Lane/The Columbian)

Football coach Charles Anthony has made a solid first impression with the Evergreen High School program.

"Shorter practices, but harder," said quarterback Marvin Thomas, who will be a senior in the fall. "If you miss anything, you're pretty much done for."

Not that any of the linemen are complaining about the double-wing offense that Anthony has brought to spring drills.

"It allows us just to beat the crap out of people all the time," said Jacob Maki, who will be a junior.

This is the third week of spring drills for the Plainsmen, but the second with Anthony, who was finishing the school year with his teaching job in Las Vegas before moving to Vancouver. In just those few days, though, he has his players believing they can make the transition to his offense, believing they can win this fall.

That in itself is a victory for Anthony. Evergreen failed to make the playoffs last fall and has not been to state since the Plainsmen became the first Vancouver squad to win a state championship in 2004.

Anthony is not predicting that kind of success right away, but he does expect to win. And he expects his players to be prepared.

"They're going to work harder than they've ever worked before," Anthony said. "It's going to take some time for them to understand it. But once they reap the benefits of it on the field, and in the classroom, it's going to be a good deal for them."

Anthony is taking over for Tom Smythe, who left after two years at Evergreen to return to coach in Oregon. Anthony is a proven winner — he went 43-15 the past five seasons at Cheyenne High School in Las Vegas — but he acknowledges he does not participate in the political aspects of the coaching world. That, he said, led to his dismissal from Cheyenne.

"There are two different visions," he said without getting into specifics. "My vision is for the kids."

Anthony, who grew up in Vegas and played football at UNLV, was surprised to be out of a coaching job. But instead of wondering what if, he took it as an opportunity to move his family to Vancouver, his wife's hometown. Kimberly Anthony played softball as Kimberly Smith at Columbia River High School. The two athletes met at UNLV, and now they have three daughters.

"Life goes on," Anthony said. "You're going to pick yourself up and make life the way you want to make it."

He impressed Evergreen officials with his philosophy: "Work hard, do things right, and no excuses."

Anthony also worked through a situation similar to what the older schools in the Evergreen School District have had to endure recently. A new school was built and a large number of would-be Cheyenne students were taken in by the new school. That did not alter Anthony's plan for his program, though, and Cheyenne kept winning.

Evergreen, he said, can win, regardless of how many students went to new-school Union the past couple of years. His focus is coaching the Plainsmen, not to concern himself with which athlete is moving away from Evergreen.

"I'm not in the business of making you feel good or entertaining you every day," he said. "High school football should be a positive experience. If you feel this is not the place for you, by all means do what you have to do."

Anthony acknowledged that his experience with newer school/older school perceptions and realities might have been a factor in his hiring.

"You want someone who has been through some adversity with your school and can handle it," he said.

There also are perception vs. reality of the double-wing offense that Anthony has had to explain. Some players expressed their reservations of the offense, which bunches all 11 players close together and uses a variety of fakes and misdirection blocking schemes to find room for the eventual ballcarrier.

"You have a plethora of schools who are running the spread offense, and only a handful of those are winning," Anthony said. "It doesn't matter which offense you use; it's a matter of executing the offense."

Anthony said instead of using four or five wide receivers to spread the field, he will get the ball to five or six running backs a game. And he said he has plenty of variations, surprises, for opposing defenses just expecting another running play.

"We will throw the ball," he said.

For now, it is all about teaching. His players are listening.

"The plays are totally different from what I used to run," Thomas said. "And he seems like he knows what he's talking about. I like him so far. And the biggest thing is all the (assistant) coaches are behind him. He's drilling it into us, and all the coaches are right there behind him, pushing us further, letting us know we're going to get back to Evergreen football."

Anthony also likes what he sees from the Plainsmen.

"I think they're working hard. They work hard, but it's a work in progress," Anthony said. "That's all you can ask as a coach is for your kids to work hard. Everything else is on the coaches. Effort is all them."