LAKEWOOD RANCH – When young players make mistakes, do young head coaches do the same?
“Absolutely,” said first-year head coach Scott Paravicini of the Bradenton Christian football team. “I’m sure I’ll be doing a lot of these. I’m sure I’ve made some looking back on the time I’ve been hired now. I just hope they aren’t giants. Something we can recover from and build on.”
The Local Boy Makes a Good story couldn’t have a more local protagonist than Scott Paravicini, at 28 the youngest area head football coach. Born in Sarasota, his father took over a pest control business his father started in 1967. Paravicini’s mother moved to Sarasota during elementary school while a grandfather worked as a sheet metal worker near Tampa.
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At age 4, Scott’s family moved to East Bradenton, and when the time came to attend high school, Paravicini enrolled at Lakewood Ranch High and became a Mustang football player. But if you think the story goes on and Paravicini becomes a star on the team, college offers come from everywhere, then this story belongs to someone else.
“I was average,” he said. “I wasn’t very tall (160 pounds) and I wasn’t very fast. Luckily, I knew that to be successful I had to understand the scheme we were playing and that I had to be good at the fundamentals and do things right.”
Paravicini didn’t pretend he was better than he was. Even then, he knew he had to approach the game with the mindset of a future head coach, not that of a player. But the route Paravicini would take to get there was unknown even to him. After high school, he wanted to be a marine mechanic. Working for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission was another opportunity.
He enrolled at State College of Florida for two years “to see where my path would take me”. But Paravicini stayed in shape and to be honest he never lost his nerve to play football. He unsuccessfully sent his high school film to a couple of NAIA schools in Florida.
Then he got some. His then girlfriend had played softball with SCF before accepting a scholarship to NAIA Warner University in Lake Wales. While there for orientation, she asked one of the soccer players what he did to get recruited. “Oh,” he said, “I just emailed the head coach.”
Paravicini did the same and eventually earned preferred walk-on status. But once again he was in a football environment where he wasn’t the best player. Far from it.
“I played minimal,” he said. “I was the shortest linebacker here, too. I weighed 180 pounds and the next smallest was 200 pounds. Another tough fight.”
But Paravicini had already started thinking like a coach. “I sat in the meetings and absorbed everything I could absorb.”
He graduated from Warner with a degree in exercise and sports leadership.
“I knew I wanted to be a football coach. But I knew football doesn’t pay the bills. I really didn’t know what my real job would be.”
Paravicini hopped around a bit, working at YouFit for a time before landing a spot at Bayshore High, where he worked with the team’s linebackers. While there, Paravicini was asked by the team’s defensive coordinator if he had considered substitute lessons.
Paravicini began substituting at various schools before landing a job at Lakewood Ranch working with Mustang linebackers. Mick Koczersut, who was the coach when Paravicini played, went one step further: Have you ever thought of becoming a full-time teacher?
“I have no idea,” Paravicini said. “I had never really thought about it.”
But his career as a football coach was slowly taking shape. A third introduced Paravicini to Bradenton Christian head coach Greg Williford. Shortly after, Williford hired the 25-year-old as his defensive coordinator.
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“Even when he hired me, at one point I told him I wanted to be a head coach. This is part of my journey; It’s a chapter in the book and I’m grateful for it, but I wanted to be a head coach and I’ve always expressed that to Greg. I didn’t know how that would be sooner or later.”
As it turned out, sooner than Paravicini ever expected. After a season’s experience as defensive coordinator, Paravicini was selected to replace Williford, who will remain as head of the school’s facilities.
“I’m really grateful to Greg for the opportunity he’s giving me,” Paravicini said. “Greg has stood up for me in the past and I definitely owe Greg a lot.”
Paravicini knows what he’s getting himself into. At his first spring practice as defensive coordinator, he saw 14 kids show up. He asked Williford, “How are you going to practice with 14 kids?” Williford replied, “You’ll see.”
He has 35 for spring training, not everyone an accomplished football veteran. The quarterback forgot to bring the ball bag to a practice session. A few others had to be shown how to put on their helmets. Instead of grabbing it by the ear piercings and pulling down, they tried to push it onto the top of their head.
If that’s the worst thing Paravicini has to face then he’ll be lucky. Above all, he wants to continue what Williford started. And yes, with bugs along the way.
“I think Greg set a precedent for how we’re going to do things,” he said, “and let the wins follow.”
Table of Contents
SPRING FOOTBALL GAMES
WEDNESDAY
Tampa Jesuit at Palmetto, 7 p.m
North Harbor in Booker County, 7 p.m
THURSDAY
North Fort Myers in Port Charlotte, 7 p.m
Seminole Osceola at Lakewood Ranch, 7 p.m
Venice in Lakeland, 7 p.m
Bradenton Christian at Bayshore, 7 p.m
Charlotte at South Fort Myers, 7 p.m
Southeast in Sebring, 7:30 p.m
Cambridge, Saint Stephen’s at the Out of Door, 6pm
Indian Rocks Christians, Sarasota Christians, Southwest Florida Christians in Keswick, Christians, 7:00 p.m
Evangelical Christian in Lemon Bay, 7 p.m
IMG Academy scrimmage
FRIDAY
Island Coast at Cardinal Mooney, 7 p.m
Pinellas Park on the Braden River, 7 p.m
FRIDAY 27 MAY
Manatee, Riverview in Sarasota, 5:30 p.m