Changing of the guard: Shepherd Hill, Lunenburg, Nipmuc have welcomed new high school football coaches

Barring any unexpected surprises, the high school football coaching lineup is set for the 2023 season — only 3½ months until training camp begins!

Here’s a look at three of the newest members of a football fraternity that also welcomed Zac Attaway at Hudson, Chris Simoneau at Worcester Tech and John Vassar at St. John’s during the offseason.

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Steve Ide, Shepherd Hill

Ide hails from Webster — although his family has deep roots in Charlton — and was a center/linebacker on the football team at Bartlett, from which he graduated in 1994.

“Honestly, I wasn’t much of a high school player,” Ide, 46, said. “We had a good team, but I wasn’t very big, I wasn’t very fast and I wasn’t very strong. Other than that, I was great.

“(But) it was amazing. I always loved the game despite not being the best player and I had always hoped that when I had kids of my own, if they wanted to play, my intent was always to be involved in the game. I really did love it.”

Ide initially got involved coaching his son, Adam, who went on to become a two-way lineman at Shepherd Hill, at the youth level. One thing led to another, and he served as an assistant on the staffs of Chris Lindstrom, Ryan Dugan and Dave Buchanan at Shepherd Hill for 13 seasons over a 15-year span.

“I jumped at the opportunity and really didn’t know what the heck I was doing,” Ide said of the coaching opportunity that arose when Lindstrom asked him to come aboard in 2008. “And Coach Lindstrom was unbelievable, took me under his wing.

“I spent a long time with him and the coaching staff there, and I kept getting better and better under his mentorship and tutelage.”

When the Rams’ head coaching position opened in January, Ide, who had nothing but high praise for the departed Buchanan, decided to toss his name into the mix.

“I thought maybe it was time to give it a shot,” said Ide, who has called Dudley home for the past 15 or 16 years and is an eighth grade English teacher at Dudley Middle School said. “So I applied for the job, and it worked out.”

The Rams, who are coming off back-to-back 4-7 seasons, have long been a double-wing team, and that’s not going to change as Ide is a devotee of the run-first offense, bristling at those who don’t believe it can be explosive.

“Obviously, everything we do is going to be based off of power running,” Ide said, “but you look at some of the teams we’ve had over the years at Shepherd Hill, and we were pretty multiple and pretty dynamic.

“We’ve got a young team, and we need to go back to some fundamentals, some real double-wing basics, but my hope is that we’re able to get to the point where we can kind of open up all the diversity with the double wing that you can really have fun with.”

Casey McDonnell, Lunenburg

As McDonnell made his way academically and athletically through Timberlane Regional in his hometown of Plaistow, New Hampshire, and Endicott College, the plan was to become a high school English teacher and coach.

But after graduating from Endicott, where he played offensive line for the Gulls, McDonnell entered the coaching field at the collegiate level in 2014. He spent a year each at his alma mater and the University of New Hampshire and six years at Castleton University in Vermont before returning to Endicott last season.

Through it all, he never let go of his original plan of teaching at coaching high school student-athletes.

“Over time it kind of just kept coming back to me where in the back of my head it was, ‘Like, that was the original idea. Something I wanted to do,’ ” McDonnell, 30, said. “I found a heck of an opportunity here and said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ ”

McDonnell was named coach of the Blue Knights late last month and will replace Anthony Nalen, who left to become head coach at Biship Guertin in Nashua, New Hampshire, after leading the Blue Knights to a 6-5 record and the Division 7 state tournament last fall.

“It was right place, right time,” McDonnell said. “I saw that Lunenburg had opened up, and like I said, I fell in love with the place the first day I stepped foot here. I’ve been very fortunate to have everything work out the way it has since.”

McDonnell, who was scheduled to move into his recently purchased home in Lunenburg this weekend, is working as a paraprofessional at the high school and helping coach the track team this spring.

Taking what he did at the college level and converting it to something that will work in high school after identifying what his players are capable of is, McDonnell said, his biggest initial challenge. As for his philosophy, it’s grounded in flexibility and productivity.

“Overall, I think it’s adaptability to what kids can do and, especially with the numbers you have, it has to be about being efficient,” McDonnell said. “You have to be able to control the game. I’m not the biggest believer in you have to go crazy tempo fast and outrun your opponents because that requires a lot of conditioning on your part.

“While we’re going to stress keeping the team in the best condition possible, being able to control time of possession and chock out the clock can do you some favors, too.”

McDonnell has settled in quite nicely at Lunenburg and credited Eric Smith, a holdover from last year’s staff who will serve as his defensive coordinator, for helping him quickly get up to speed on the Blue Knights football program.

“He was a sturdy presence for the program to keep things afloat (during the coaching search),” McDonnell said, “and he’s been a phenomenal person and a phenomenal presence to work with.”

James Royster, Nipmuc

Royster entered the coaching field as an assistant at Blackstone Valley Tech for a couple of years, serving under Jim Archibald, who he played football with at Northbridge, and Anthony Landini, who he played against when the Rams faced rival Uxbridge on Thanksgiving.

Then it was on to Oxford, where Royster spent the last five seasons on the staff of coach Jeff Clarkson, the past three as offensive coordinator, with the Pirates averaging 30-plus points and advancing to the Division 8 state semifinals in 2021 and ’22.

Then the Nipmuc job opened with the departure of James Tupper after four seasons, and Royster decided to take a shot at running his own team.

“Really, one thing led to another and the opening happened and pretty much how it went,” said the 37-year-old Northbridge resident, who works with kids on the autism spectrum and was hired in February. “ It was just an opportunity.”

There was plenty to like about Nipmuc, from its proximity to Northbridge, where he still resides, to the fact the Warriors traditionally have been a competitive program, reaching the Division 5 state final in 2018 before falling on tough times the past four seasons.

“The good thing about Nipmuc is, it’s had a strong name for a long time,” Royster said before offering up his coaching philosophy. “I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel because the kids are there, the players are there.

“They want to win. That’s what they know, and that’s what they’ve grown up on, winning. That’s what they want to do. I just want to bring the same thing.

“I’m open minded. I talked to the players — I need their feedback — and that’s pretty much the only thing I’m bringing into the program, is just being open minded. And I’m willing to try anything and do anything, it’s about winning now.”

In addition to success as a coach, Royster knows all about winning from his time at Northbridge. A running back and defensive end, he helped the Rams handily defeat Wahconah to win the Central/Western Mass. Division 2 Super Bowl as a junior and a senior before graduating in 2003.

“We were pretty decent,” Royster said. “It was a good time.”

—Contact Rich Garven at rgarven@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @RichGarvenTG.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: New football coaches are on board at Shepherd Hill, Lunenburg, Nipmuc