Unconventional offseason for new Yough coach Chunko

By Bill Beckner

Trib Total Media

Unorthodox and fluid, the first few months of Chris Chunko’s rookie year as a head football coach have been a slow but surprisingly steady process.

The job did not come with a how-to manual, especially one that included a section on negotiating the effects of a global pandemic.

Football has become a year-round venture, and when the offseason schedule goes awry, a program can miss a beat.

Not on Cougar Mountain.

“Everyone is on the same level,” said Chunko, the new head man at Yough. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in your 30th year as a coach or a first-year coach. Nobody has dealt with this before.”

The covid-19 crisis has rocked sports, disrupting summer football workouts and rearranging how they operate with safety guidelines and precautions that do anything but condone contact in a contact sport.

Chunko, 51, came aboard in February, before the world got sick. How things have changed.

“It’s been challenging,” he said. “We came out like a house on fire (in the spring). We were getting great numbers, and then the covid hit. The kids have been great, but we still have a lot of things we want to implement.”

That includes a spread offense under Mark Adams, the Cougars’ new offensive coordinator and former Southmoreland coach.

Yough has seen the offense on paper, so to speak. But the players hope to start to running through the zigs and zags on the field this week — and eventually get a chance to debut in a teetering season.

“The kids have been on Hudl. We downloaded our whole playbook,” Chunko said. “And we’ve had 15 Zoom meetings. Twice a week we meet: one for offense and one for defense. We have shown the kids how to break down film. So at least we have been able to do something football-related. It’s been beneficial.”

To read the rest of this story, please to our online edition at https://e.monvalleyindependent.com.