Inside the Program: It's all in a mindset for Bruceville-Eddy

How Kyle Shoppach changed the mindset of Bruceville-Eddy's football program and brought a district title to the small Central Texas community for the first time in 34 years.

DCTF Admin

The mindset was as simple as it was powerful: We’re gonna win.

Easy enough to say, but much harder to turn into reality.

That especially rang true for a Bruceville-Eddy program that hadn’t experienced the thrill of a district championship in 34 years leading up to the 2019 season.

Might as well have made it 35, right?

Yeah, you must not know Kyle Shoppach.

He knew he had his work cut out for himself when he took over the program prior to last season. But he knew if he could get his players to buy-in to what he and his coaching staff were selling, that streak would be no longer.

“What I didn’t know was how starved for football success they were until I got here,” he said. “Tapping into that was what was so fun about it. They wanted you to push you, show them their flaws.”

Two-a-days weren’t fun. The Eagles were being pushed harder than ever. It was all part of Shoppach’s process.

“We wanted them to understand that the reason they had failed before was because they didn’t work to be winners,” he said. “They just worked to work. We started showing them that this work that we’re doing has a payoff. If you’ll follow the plan, you will win.”

“There were grown men and women crying on the field as if they’d just had their first-born child,” Shoppach said.

That’s not hyperbole. Tears flowed well into the early morning hours of the following day.

“It was one of the most special things I’ve ever done,” he said.

What made it that much more special was that outside linebacker Colby Tolbert’s father, Ed Tolbert, and defensive lineman Ian Moore’s father, Brent Moore, were both on that last district championship team.

In fact, Brent Moore held several offensive records that were broken in 2019.

“He was very supportive,” Shoppach said. “He just kept telling me to break those records.”

They did. Twenty-one school records to be exact.

Quarterback Trapper Ensor broke every passing record you could think of. Running back Nathan Quattlebaum rushed for 2,626 yards.

“By the end of the season, those kids believed that they were going to win,” Shoppach said. “It had the feel of a program that had won all their life.”

Bruceville-Eddy’s season came to an unfortunate end in the bi-district round of the playoffs, but that’s only made the drive for success that much stronger for the town of less than 2,000 located between Temple and Waco.

Shoppach likes his odds of winning another district championship. The Eagles return 13 juniors that all played significant roles in 2019.

Though “the momentum train has stopped and it’s unfortunate” with schools across the country shut down due to COVID-19, Shoppach will make sure there’s one thing front-and-center on everyone’s mind whenever they get back on the field: We’re gonna win.

They know the feeling.

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