‘Defend Blankenship’
Oak Ridge High School Head Football Coach Derek Rang speaks to the ORHS Football Booster Club. (photo:Tony Cox )
He’s been busy, he noted, but he needed to address a few things.
Rang was hired in January, after Oak Ridge High School officials parted ways with Scott Cummings.
Rang, a graduate of Maryville High School, returns to East Tennessee after spending the 2022 season at Lewis County, where he guided the Panthers to an 11-2 record and an appearance in the Class 2A quarterfinals.
He previously coached at Powell and Gatlinburg-Pittman.
Rang won a Class 1A state championship at Dresden in 2016. He went 32-8 as Dresden’s head coach.
“We want to be the last team standing at the end of the year,” Rang told the Wildcat faithful. “But you have to win the region, you want that home field in the playoffs.”
A big step in being the last team standing, Rang said, was simple: “Defend Blankenship. Defend our home turf.”
Rang said winning the region, securing a home- field playoff advantage, “and beating our rivals,” were high priorities.
“And we want to win those rivalry games,” he said. “Oak Ridge has a number of rivals, and we want to win those games.”
Rang spoke on a number of subjects including spring drills, weight training schedules in the off-season, and his expectations of the Wildcat student-athletes.
“We need them to be prepared not just for playing football, but academically as well,” he said.
He said that any player who fell below the academic requirements would be met with to discuss what’s happening in that student’s academic life, and then to make a plan to address it.
“We’re going to help that student,” Rang said.
He also noted that, while he was still finalizing his coaching staff, it was important to get freshman and junior varsity games ironed out and on the schedule.
“We’ll get something like 40 freshmen from Robertsville and Jefferson (middle schools — the “feeder schools”), and we need to get those players the opportunity to play,” he said. “That’s why you go out for football. To play.
“We need to make that happen.”
The problem, Rang said, is that there are not many schools within a 90-minute travel range that offer freshman football.
“I just don’t think you can travel an hour-and-a-half on a school night (JV and freshmen games are played during the week) for a game,” he said. “Not on a school night.”
While there are three such games on the schedule now, he said he is looking to bring on more games for the underclassmen.
Rang also spoke on “getting the word out” about Oak Ridge High School athletics and Oak Ridge High School as a whole.”
“We need to find ways to get the word out that sthere are good things going on at Oak Ridge High School,” he said.
He appealed to the boosters to help in that endeavor.
Rang said he is encouraging all Wildcat football players to download the app, “BAND.”
He said he used that in the past and it is good way for the team to keep up to date on what the team is doing and to find out about schedules.
He said it is also a good way for players to interact with the coaching staff.
Rang said he would set up a separate BAND app for parents of players so they could follow what the team was doing.
The coach also noted the team will play in the 2023 jamboree at Crason-Newman next fall.