Through activities like the "Book Club" Saluki Football fostering player-driven leadership
- Tom Weber
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
CARBONDALE, Ill. — Every Wednesday afternoon leading up to Spring Ball, Saluki Football held a team-wide meeting, not to talk about Xs and Os, but for players to lead a discussion about what makes a great team.
They call it “Book Club,” and it’s just one way the program fosters player-driven leadership within the team.
“I've never been with a program that's done anything like that, so I thought it was really cool,” said Illinois transfer guard Kellen Francis, who led yesterday’s discussion. “You learn a lot about your teammates and they learn a lot about you, and it makes you want to fight for them even more. As soon as I got here, you could see that we are a really well-led team by the players, with so many veteran guys on both sides of the ball. That's just the culture here, and it makes it easy to walk into an environment like this and feel comfortable.”
The national bestseller book that the team read (“The 7 Commitments of a Great Team”) was the conduit for some deep conversations. Among the topics the players discussed were, how do you build trust among teammates? How do you hold each other accountable? How do you stay positive, especially during the tough times?
“The book was basically talking about the value of teamwork and the amount of adversity a team goes through during a season,” said junior defensive end Jake Parrella, who also led one of the Book Club meetings. “It was good to hear people's real-life experiences.”
Head coach Nick Hill selected a different player each week to lead the discussions. Coaches offered comments, but it was mostly players doing the talking.
“I was definitely excited for the opportunity when Coach Hill called my name to lead the discussion,” said senior running back Chandler Chapman. “The one thing I learned was you gotta love what you do and love the guys around you doing it. That makes it 10 times better when you love the guys next to you.”
Off-season workouts provided another opportunity for the team to bond. Unless the turf was covered in snow, the players were working-out before the sun came up, often in frigid temperatures.
“This is my fourth year here, and I'd say this is the best offseason we've had as a group, when it comes to everyone being locked in and just the energy we've had at workouts,” Parrella said. “We were out here at 6 a.m. when it was freezing cold and we’re fired up and have guys just screaming ‘Let's go!’”
The team is also close outside of football, and players make an effort to get to know guys outside their normal friend group, according to Chapman.
“We’ll get together and watch boxing matches, UFC fights,” he said. “Last summer, we were going fishing a lot. Those things definitely brought us together and looking forward to doing that again.”
Hill said it’s the responsibility of the coaching staff to facilitate a strong, player-led culture.
“All the buzz words that are said about teams, they really don't have any meaning unless there's a connection there,” he explained.
Hill continued, “you try to put them in as many different situations as you can through practice, through offseason, to see how they're going to respond and if things need to get corrected. You're building the team for when adversity hits, when things get tough, which is inevitable every season. How are we going to act in those times? We can find those things out in environments that aren't going to cost you a loss. You need to go through hard things together to create that bond. It's going to mean more to you when you're going through it with somebody that you care about.”
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Practice 5 Notebook
After a frigid morning on Tuesday, today’s practice was warm enough to wear shorts. It was also the first practice in full pads. The team did not do any true live work, sticking to what they call, “thud.”
