Player-led approach aiding in establishing a culture at West Virginia
Building a culture in a football program doesn’t happen overnight.
It takes commitment and accountability not only from the coaching staff but the players themselves. It’s something that senior offensive lineman Ja’Quay Hubbard has seen the growth of firsthand since he arrived on campus prior to the 2020 season as a transfer from Virginia.
“We demand it. We’re older so if the young guys see us doing it they don’t have a choice,” he said.
West Virginia head coach Neal Brown often tells his players to better their best and it is a requirement to do that if this team wants to take things further than they were able to a year ago. While a 9-4 season with a bowl win is a good start, the Mountaineers are shooting higher.
To simply put it, if this team thinks it’s arrived, it’s wrong.
“We talk about trying to go to Dallas every day. That’s really the mindset right now,” Hubbard said.
Brown has spoken in the past about creating a player-led program and while there have been some bumps in the road to get there it’s starting to come together. While the coaching staff has a standard for the players, they also have some of their own.
And it’s critical that the upperclassmen are living up to that.
“The players leading are holding that standard so you have to adapt or get out,” Hubbard said.
It’s a process that starts in the meeting rooms and practice fields and carries over into all aspects of the football program. For example, Hubbard and many other team leaders were showing up at 5:45 a.m. during the spring, which is well before they were expected to be there.
In practice, if any of the leaders made a mistake, it couldn’t be repeated. And the tone even in a more laid-back spring practice setting was more serious than it had been with players maximizing reps.
“I can’t just talk about it, I have to be about it too,” Hubbard said.
It sounds easy enough but accountability is critical to establishing a culture and finding the right guys in the locker room that will embrace that goes a long way in that department. Being great isn’t easy so it takes sacrifices from those on the team in order to get the right type of mindset entrenched.
That hasn’t always been the case as Hubbard admits that in the past that had been a problem at times as there were talented players but some that he refers to as energy vampires. Instead of taking accountability, they would finger-point and complain.
And it doesn’t take many of those in key spots to disrupt the culture.
“We’ve made an environment where let me be accountable. Tide raises all boats and everybody being on the same page, and they don’t want to feel left out,” he said.
The players spend more time together than any other group and they are able to regulate issues on the roster with anybody not fitting in or causing issues. It’s something that the coaching staff even relies on the players during recruiting to give their own assessments of how any potential adds fit in.
It’s taken some time, but West Virginia believes that the locker room culture is as strong as it’s been since Brown took control of the football program.
“This team we love each other. You can see that on the field. You’ve got a team that loves each other and coach Mike (Joseph) just instills that fighter mentality in us. We just feel unbeatable,” Hubbard said.
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