New Flathead Football Coach Urges Team to Chase Perfection, and Catch Greatness

In the view of Mac Roche, there are football coaches who demand respect from their players, and there are coaches who earn respect from their players. The new head coach for the Flathead High Braves football team is clear about where his coaching philosophy falls on that spectrum.

“I’m going to gain the respect of the players based on how I operate on a day-to-day basis, how I show them respect, and how I coach them,” he said during a recent interview.

As if to prove his point, Roche’s voice was on its last legs as he talked about his approach to building the culture of his football team. Fresh off of three hours of coaching a youth football camp in the July sun at Legends Stadium, the only measure of comfort for Roche’s vocal chords came in the form of a coffee tumbler plucked off a locker and refilled with water.

“I showed up with a lot of energy and a lot of excitement. We try to coach the kids the best we can, and when you pour into them, it makes it a lot easier for those kids to respect you and buy into you,” Roche said.

About five months into the job, and with the first preseason team practices looming in August, Roche believes his approach to coaching football — stitched together from his experiences as a coach and player —  has paid off so far. He hasn’t found it especially difficult to get players to buy-in, which suggests that the Flathead football program may be down, but not out.

The years leading up to Roche’s tenure have been tough for the football team, which has won five games since 2019, according to records available on MaxPreps, and is now on its fifth head coach in about seven years.

Success, however, is not so far in the past. The year before the team’s slide began, Flathead made it all the way to the AA state championship for the first time in nearly 20 years, but came up short in a 20-14 lost to Billings West. It was the culmination of a decade-long stretch in which Flathead made the AA state playoffs five times, including while Roche was still playing for Whitefish High.

A quarterback for the Bulldogs, Roche broke his foot in the first game of his senior season in 2010, and as the Whitefish Pilot reported at the time, among the colleges who had been interested in recruiting him, only Carroll College stuck by him.

A two-year starter for the Saints, Roche assembled a 14-8 record, including a 10-2 redshirt junior season under coach Mike Van Diest, who retired in 2018 with a 203-53 record. By the time Roche played his last snap for Carroll, he had passed for 47 touchdowns and 5,194 yards.

“My path really has been for as long as I can live, I wanted to play football as long as I could,” Roche said. “And then when the answer was no, and I couldn’t play anymore after college, it was ‘Hey, now I’m gonna coach as long as I can.’”

Since he left Carroll, Roche has had stints as the activities director, track and field head coach, quarterbacks coach and strength and conditioning coach for Loyola Sacred Heart High School in Missoula, and as the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for Whitefish High, where he also worked as a special education teacher. His return to the Flathead was preceded by roughly two years coaching football in South Carolina, where he said he got a chance to learn more about the structure and organization of a football program which produced multiple Power Four college football players.

Over the course of his football journey, Roche said he’s tried to take a little bit of what he’s loved from each stop along the way, and mold it together into who he thinks the Flathead Braves can become as a team. That includes not just what he learned in Loyola, or under Van Diest, or in South Carolina, but also what he learned coaching for his alma mater, Whitefish High, under head coaches Chad Ross and Brett Bollweg. Referencing Ross and Bollweg, Roche said that the character they’ve instilled in their programs is something he wants to emulate.

Already, Roche said that the team is ahead of where he thought they would be, which he sees as a testament to the desire of coaches and players to get the team to the next level. Players have been lifting, running, practicing and watching film throughout the summer. At the same time, Roche said that he and his staff are trying to teach the team how to act both on and off the field.

Looking over the roster on his hands, Roche said that the team’s offensive line last year was mostly made up of sophomores and juniors, who were young, but gained valuable experience.

“You look at where football games are won and lost, and that’s on the offensive and defensive line,” Roche said.

He’s seen his linemen put in the work this offseason, and he said he expects the unit to be one of the team’s strengths this year under the coaching of offensive line coach AJ Burnham and defensive line coach and co-defensive coordinator Daniel Simmons.

“I’m very pleased with where our offensive and defensive line are right now,” Roche said.

The coach also believes he has a good quarterback room on his hands, complemented by some great running backs and one especially fast receiver, Will Hollensteiner, who is coming off a record-setting showing at the state AA track and field championships where he won in the 400, 300-meter hurdles, 200-meter dash, and 1,600-meter relay. The linebacker corps is another position group that has Roche’s eye. A mix of sophomores, juniors and seniors, he said that they’re in good hands with coach Mitchell Czerniak, the co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach.

“We’re gonna demand a lot of perfection and detail,” Roche said, of how he and his coaching staff are approaching their roles. “But I tell our guys, we’re gonna chase perfection. Which, perfection is essentially not attainable. But if we’re chasing perfection, we’re gonna catch greatness. And greatness is going to be something that’s going to propel our program.”

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