By Lauren Kirschman / The News Tribune
It’s been nearly four months since Washington head coach Chris Petersen sat at a table with a handful of local reporters at Pac-12 Media Day. Fall practice hadn’t started yet. The home opener against Eastern Washington was just a circled date on a calendar. All of the goals and expectations for the season were still possible.
Petersen stayed for nearly two hours in the Los Angeles sunshine, answering question after question. During spring practice, he often talked about the importance of keeping levity in his program. On that day, he was asked why he focused so intensely on making sure his players had balance. He felt like it should have been obvious — but he answered anyway.
“I think we’re all so intense and I think this thing is so important to so many people,” Petersen said then. “Everybody from the players up understand that. I think for us to do our best work, there needs to be enjoyment and fun. Everybody knows if you’re not winning then nothing is fun. But it’s a little bit of chicken and egg. So, we work on that.
“It’s hard for me, you know, because I can be very intense and very focused and, ‘Stop messing around.’ Just as a kid, playing the game, it gave us the balance of life. I just want this to be, you know, a game-changing experience kids have had. A lot of it is going to be hard work and sacrifice and perseverance and setbacks. But the other side of that, too, is they need to have some joy. It is really easy not to enjoy this real consciously.”
Flash forward to the end of November. The Huskies are 6-4 with two regular-season games remaining. They lost head-scratching games to Cal and Stanford. They let potential victories over top-10 teams Oregon and Utah slip away back-to-back. There will be no Pac-12 championship or Rose Bowl or College Football Playoff. Suddenly, Petersen’s words about how easy it can be not to enjoy the experience seem almost clairvoyant.
On Thursday, four months and 1,000 miles and 10 games away from that table in Hollywood, Petersen revisited those themes. He first touched on it during his press conference on Monday, talking about how this season has been filled with more adversity than most. There are more important things in life, he said, than winning and losing football games. But for the players, it’s been something to overcome.
This season, finding the balance has been a little bit more difficult.
“I think it’s always about balance and perspective, and it’s always harder to do those things when things don’t go your way, whether it’s whatever: Football, life, school,” Petersen said during his meeting with the media on Thursday. “That’s part of this whole program, just training not only our kids but the coaches and ourselves. Like, this stuff is not life and death. It’s really important to us. We can learn lessons through it and stay strong in the mind. How do we progress when it’s just not how we want it to be?
“Part of it is, with these guys we have, sometimes it’s trying too much. It’s like, no. That anxiety is going the wrong way. Just relax, back to ground zero, neutral-type thinking and let’s go make the next play. Let’s just enjoy this thing for what it is. We’re not going to go out there and play perfect, and I think so many times we want that. When it doesn’t go perfect or our way, we can start to get on our heels a little bit. We have to be able to work through that.”
This year, the seniors have lost more games than they’re used to. That means his message to this particular class had to change.
“In terms of the energy and importance, and the effort that everybody puts into it, it is hard to reload and stay focused and keep scratching and keeping clawing and keep supporting each other,” Petersen said. “That’s hard. I think there’s a lot of good that can come out of that, not just for these kids football-wise, but other things down the road.”
Defensive back Myles Bryant is one of the seniors nearing the end of an up-and-down final season. The road hasn’t always been easy, but he said the experience offered him plenty of lessons.
“Just understand that there’s more to everything than you think there is,” Bryant said Tuesday after practice. “If you watch film, you watch film meticulously. You can go out there and practice detailed and it will, in turn, make your game better. Just trying to do everything we can, just having all the details in-line and the details in order to be the best team we possibly can.”
Offensive lineman Trey Adams is working through the same experience. He said it’s more difficult, both physically and mentally, to recover after losses. After a win, it’s easier to push through the typical wear and tear of a season.
“But when you lose,” he said Wednesday, “it just sucks.”
Perhaps that’s why Petersen tries to start the balance early with the Husky Olympics in the fall. In between the grind of practices, UW’s position groups compete in everything from swimming to basketball to soccer. It’s not easy to plan and it messes Petersen’s schedule up and he worries whether they’ll be fresh enough for practice. But it’s important.
“That’s one of the ways I try to build camaraderie and laugh and have fun in team meetings,” Petersen said in July. “The coaches, I put a lot on them in their meetings. Have some levity. When I walk by and hear the guys laughing, I’m like OK. That’s good. That’s good stuff. I know the kids have focused back in.”
The point was driven home for Petersen last season when wide receiver Chico McClatcher decided to step away from football for personal reasons. McClatcher was fixating on mistakes he’d made on the field. During fall camp almost a year later, McClatcher could still recite the plays that stuck with him the most. But Petersen couldn’t, and he said that was the point. He wants his players to be passionate about football, but he never wants it to consume them.
“I don’t even remember, right?” Petersen said at Pac-12 media day. “I don’t even remember what it was, but these kids remember every single detail. We walk that fine balance where we want those kids that are so passionate about ball and they’re all in but it’s also like, we got to help them keep perspective. Sometimes you don’t know that the walls are closing in because it’s too late.”
Late in fall practice, junior running back Sean McGrew talked about gratitude journals — the ones Petersen tells his players to write in every day. Two or three years ago, McGrew said, he would’ve rolled his eyes at the idea.
Now, he looks forward to it.
“I feel like him caring about us a person and what real life is other than football and what’s important has like really helped me as a person a lot,” McGrew said in August, “and I know it helps a lot of people on this team, which is awesome.”
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