Culture shift sparks success

A flurry of text messages. Screams from the stands. Unexpected tears trickling over eye black. Countless hugs and helmet slaps. 

That was the scene at McBride Field following the Kenyon College football team’s 13-12 season-ending Senior Day victory over Ohio Wesleyan University, a team the Owls had not defeated since 2009 and a win that gave the program its first .500 or better record since 2012.

“It was the best game I could ask for to go out on,” senior defensive lineman Andy Canonico said. “It was probably the most heart-wrenching game with so many ups and downs, but to end my senior season on a win, is something out of a story book.”

Fellow senior defensive lineman Luke Caress added, “I felt so proud of my teammates who have been through so much to get to this point and I felt lucky to be a part of such a sentimental and important game for our program. This game will change our program for the better in the future and it sets expectations for our culture and the standard for what is next to come for the guys on this team.”

While that may be a steep statement for one moment in program history, it is clear to those Kenyon players who suited up that there was something unique about the 2024 squad. Granted, a 5-5 record is normally not reason to set off confetti cannons, but that win total equaled that of the last two seasons combined and helped further excise memories of not-so-distant winless campaigns.

The 2024 season, seemingly fueled by intangibles, very well could be labeled a break-through. History will not view the .500 record with significance, but it will hold space for the indelible experiences that, from the top down, noticeably enhanced the program.  

When asked what made the 2024 campaign different, players and staff, across the board, echoed words like buy-in, belief, investment and support. And it was last January when those seeds were planted. 

Head coach Ian Good, in his eighth year at Kenyon and third as head coach, rehashed his last two seasons, did some soul searching and recognized that he was expanding an era in program history that saw a handful of young coaches launching operations that, despite their best intentions, pushed football as its own entity and deviated from the campus panorama.

Self-admittedly, Good “struggled” to find the right formula, not only as a newly-hired position coach in 2017, but as a defensive coordinator and eventually, as a head coach. “When I took over [as head coach], my first thought was, how do I make us better now? How do I make us better as quickly as possible? That mindset, and the actions that followed, were not sustainable. What occurred during that time wasn’t truly me and it wasn’t Kenyon.” 

To his credit, Good faced his miscalculations and searched for a new path forward. 

“I felt like if we could start something new, or at least attempt a new culture, that these guys could latch onto it and it would organically grow within the team,” Good said. “They could be the ones that, if they actually bought into it, we could really flourish.”

So, at the start of the calendar year, Good did two things. He first gathered his staff to brainstorm about what they wanted Kenyon football to be. While the football portion of that discussion was important, it was made clear that any decisions would not be football-only. The staff’s decisions had to fit within the framework of Kenyon, as a College, and not be defined solely by the gridiron.

The second thing Good did was to take his staff’s ideas and present them to the team, not as the final word, but as a starting point.

“In the team meeting, we did the exact same thing, but we had our players go through the process in groups to find out what was important to them. What did they want Kenyon football to be? What did they want others to say about Kenyon football?” Good explained. “So then, I took what the players wanted and what the coaches felt was really important and we put them together to create our core values.”

That candid and direct method became the catalyst for buy-in. 

“In doing that, I felt like it allowed the players to have accountability, as well as owning a piece of what we were building,” Good added.

With the core values solidified and a new approach in place, the 2024 season got underway with a home win over Bluffton University. From that start, there were inklings that things were different.

“Going into that game, I can tell you honestly that I was terrified. That was a team [Bluffton] that put 50 points on us last year and here we were with a new coaching staff, a new defense, and a new approach. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect,” Good said. “After the win, though, I would say that it didn’t necessarily calm me, but it gave me the confidence that we were going to be okay this year.”

That confidence was quickly put to the test in the following week’s loss at Good’s alma mater, Kalamazoo College. The next week was a loss, too, but it was one that could be classified as a good loss. Playing at rival Denison University, the Owls took the Big Red into a scoreless tie deep into the third quarter. The home team, one that defeated Kenyon 16 straight seasons, managed a pair of late touchdowns to pull out the win.

Despite the loss, the Owls were obviously competitive and the levels of buy-in and belief climbed a couple more notches. Over the next three weeks, the team defeated The College of Wooster for the first time in a decade and followed up with one-sided triumphs against Oberlin College and Hiram College. All of the sudden, the Purple and White were 4-2.

Away from competition, the coaching staff tinkered with different facets of the program’s operations in attempts to utilize the time they had with the utmost efficiency and impact.  Stepping aside from the common routine of overloading the team with meetings, practices and lifting, the coaches focused on health and balance, experimenting as the season went on with what worked best. 

“What made this season different was the commitment from our players and coaches in creating a new culture and a standard that brought us out of our comfort zone,” Caress said. “You could see the passion of our players this year in everything we did, whether that was on the field with the attention to detail in every part of practices or off the field with building chemistry with teammates and excelling in the classroom. This positive culture was instilled through the coaches, as well. Our coaches were incredibly dedicated to helping us succeed not just on the field but in the classroom and everything we want to accomplish as individuals. Our coaches worked tirelessly to create effective schemes and scouting reports. Their attention to detail and passion for helping us succeed was something I’ve never had during my four years here, and it helped us improve drastically.”

Naturally, players' physical talent and coaches’ cunning both played a role in the success of the 2024 season, but if there was no buy-in and there was no support, then the wheels come off-- and that’s a direction that this team was moving away from.

“Going back to our core values, it was important that we could relate to them and, because we did, you could see things really clicking,” Good said. “I feel like we did a good job of taking our culture and taking our core values and having them actually mean something, instead of just using abstract words or slogans. And again, having the players have a say in things was extremely important. When they have a say in it, and they are bought into it, and they are attached to it, it just means so much more to them.”

From there, the Owls faced the most difficult part of their schedule with three straight games against teams that, at one point or another, were all nationally ranked over the last few years. The team lost all three, but it never did lose buy-in and the steadfast support for each other set the stage for the season-ending win against Ohio Wesleyan.

“It was pure joy. It was pure happiness,” Good said. “Seeing our guys crying after that game because they were so happy and looking back at all the work they did, it just made me proud to have been a part of it. It was just a great feeling knowing that they accomplished what they said they wanted to accomplish.”

While the season culminated fantastically in that finale, the intent is for the crescendo to continue.

“The expectations were clear and there was belief from the players, driven specifically by the leaders on our team,” Offensive Coordinator Blake Cattrell said. “I do think that belief can be replicated in the future because we had so many underclassmen that were able to play this past season and taste that success. They will be able to demonstrate and lead our future teams, much like our graduating seniors just did and we will be able to carry over that belief for future success. Passing that on from class to class will allow us to incrementally improve on the field and off.”