Traveling all the way from his hometown in Salina, Kansas, football coach and social studies teacher Jason Shumaker has come to HR. With an impressive background in coaching football, he has arrived at HR to improve our football program.
“I came to HRHS because I thought it would be a great opportunity to build a strong program here, my wife is from Littleton and so getting the chance to move back around her family was good,” said Shumaker. “The program has obviously had a lot of instability over the last 5 or 6 years so we’re coming in, we’re building a complete program starting at freshman level and all the way up.”
Shumaker has been coaching ever since he got out of college. “I got my college degree and played football at the University of Kansas, then coached high school football for a little bit,” said Shumaker. “I then coached all different levels of college football. Most recently I was at Louisiana Tech, Utah state, Idaho and Arkansas.”
He has coached several well known players with impressive statistics. Shumaker coached Cade Coffey who was tabbed a USA Today Freshman- All American after finishing ninth in the country for putting in 2017. Shumaker’s also led the Idaho Vandals to a unit in the top-five of the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) during the 2014, 2015 and 2016 campaigns.
Coaching several different teams led Shumaker to move around a lot which is why he is looking for some stability. “A lot of moving. My son is in 4th grade and has been to a different elementary school every year so we wanted to settle down a little bit, so I think I’ll be here a while,” said Shumaker. As for the football program and how he wants to build it, he is looking towards a college style of coaching.
“He’s brought more of a college practice to us. In the past years we’ve maybe been in pads but not hitting very much. This year we’re completely padded out for every single practice and we’re going 100 percent every time,” said Roman Schwab, varsity, right guard. Shumaker keeps his practices up tempo and keeps the team disciplined and organized. “We do some advanced things football wise, schematic wise but that’s all we know. We’re always going, we’re not out there super long but when we are out there we’re going fast and practicing hard all the time,” Schwab said.
As for the rest of the season, there is still a lot to come. “The team has been working hard, we’ve got a tough schedule to start the season, but we’re going to keep working hard, keep improving and you’ll be able to see us get better every week,” said Shumaker. “We’ve got a lot of talent, and I think we’ve got the pieces. I think we’ve just got to learn how to put everybody together and in the right spots but we should have a chance to be good.”
Amalia SanMillan, Editor in Chief
