The first team meeting of the Jack Cochran era at New London High School was packed. Lawrence Dulcice, a senior lineman, looked around the room and noticed a lot of older guys in attendance. They were tearing up, hugging each other. Dulcice turned to a teammate. "Who is Coach Cochran?" he asked.
It was a fair question. Cochran, 60, had been out of Connecticut high school football for 17 years, aside from a brief, truncated stint at Harding in Bridgeport in 2013. During that time, a full generation of players grew up without ever seeing him on a sideline. Ramzey Vidal-Ventura, a junior skill player, had no clue who the new coach was. "When he came, everyone was talking about, 'Coach Cochran! Coach Cochran!' I'm like, 'Yo, who is this guy?'"
The name once carried significant weight in the state. Cochran won a combined eight state championships with Bloomfield, New Britain and New London between 1992 and 2008, and his teams reached CIAC finals in all but two of those seasons. His career record stands at 163-31-2, an .835 winning percentage that ranks fifth in state history. He was also the most polarizing figure in the game, a volatile coach known for routing overmatched opponents and for controversial conduct that followed him from job to job. The CIAC even adopted a 50-point score management policy informally referred to as "The Cochran Rule," now defunct, a euphemistic acknowledgment of his teams' propensity for running up scores.
When Cochran left Bloomfield for New Britain in 2001, and when he returned to his alma mater New London in 2005, everyone in the state knew exactly who he was. No introduction was necessary. This time, in mid-June, when he replaced Marquise Ruffin as head coach of the Whalers, he walked into a locker room full of players who were not born when he led New London to his eighth and final championship in 2008.
"Respect has to be earned," Cochran said in his coaching office on a late August afternoon. "A lot of them didn't know who I was. So I had to earn their respect. Whereas my other moves to New Britain, and then New London the first time, I had a resume that they saw, and they knew. Now it's fresh, which is good. I had to earn their trust. They had to see, see for themselves."
The Whalers saw, and heard. At that first meeting, Cochran was soft-spoken. "We thought he was a quiet guy," Dulcice said. Then the team got to the weight room, got on the field, and discovered he could yell. Cochran told them he was wearing out his voice and they needed to keep him level-headed.
The players quickly understood that his critiques were tough love at volume. "He's never personally picking on us; he's never throwing a personal shot," Dulcice said. "He just wants us to reach our potential. He gets frustrated when he sees how much potential we have and we're not reaching it."
The Whalers went 3-7 last season, a young and undisciplined team that lacked direction. Cochran came in and immediately established order. "He came in, there was no argument. That's what I noticed," Dulcice said. "He said 'We're doing this and that's that,' and we bought in. He told us a plan and everyone just followed through."
Sophomore linebacker Mateo Ford was among those who initially didn't know the coach's history. "People were going crazy about him," Ford said. "I barely even knew who he was." But Ford also noted that Cochran didn't need to earn the players' respect. "He didn't need to," Ford said quietly. "Yeah, exactly. He just came in and an energy came off him," Dulcice added.
Cochran's only losing season came in his first year. Bloomfield went 3-7 in 1992, when he was 26, a few years removed from playing at Norwich University in Vermont after graduating from New London in 1984. The next season, Bloomfield reached the state finals. The Warhawks lost that 1993 final and lost again in each of the next three years before breaking through in 1997 with a perfect season.
The 2013 Harding season remains a sore spot. Cochran stepped away from the team in Week 5 for personal reasons he still doesn't care to discuss. "Trust me, it was the toughest thing I ever did; we had a great season going," he said. That year aside, his record is remarkably consistent.
New London opens the second Cochran era on Friday night at home at Pat Cannamela Field against Joel Barlow in a Connecticut High School Football Alliance game. The current Whalers now know who their coach is. "Yeah," Dulcice said. "We know now."
According to Yahoo Sports.
