Jim Bird Carries Lovelady’s Culture Into Next Chapter

By Greg Ritchie

Messenger Reporter

LOVELADY — On any given day, Jim Bird says he can call eight to 10 Lovelady football players and ask who wants to help bale hay.

Usually, he ends up with more volunteers than he needs.

“I’ve got to tell them, ‘OK, you’ve got to come next time. I’ve got too many,’” Bird said.

For Bird, that willingness to work is more than a rural way of life. It is part of the foundation he believes makes Lovelady athletics special.

Bird is beginning his first season as the head football coach and athletic director for Lovelady ISD, taking over a program he already knows well. Before stepping into the top position, Bird spent seven years as the defensive coordinator under former athletic director and head coach Will Kirchhoff, widely known as Coach K.

Kirchhoff recently left Lovelady to return to his hometown and work with his father, giving Bird the opportunity to lead the Lions into their next chapter.

“I didn’t really want him to leave,” Bird said. “But when he made the decision to do it, I just told him I supported him. That is something special.”

Bird was one of the first coaches Kirchhoff hired when he arrived at Lovelady. He remained on staff throughout Kirchhoff’s entire seven-year tenure and helped install the defensive system and overall program philosophy that became familiar to the Lions.

“I was able to bring some experience for him, and I ran the defense under him the whole time he was here,” Bird said. “I really got to be a part of the program getting installed the way that he wanted it to be, which aligned with my beliefs and my philosophies.”

Bird said he and Kirchhoff shared many of the same ideas about coaching, discipline and the kind of young men they wanted their players to become.

“Coach K is a great coach and a great leader,” Bird said. “We saw eye to eye on almost everything. It was the perfect place for me to get in.”

Bird joked that he once told Kirchhoff he needed at least 10 years in Lovelady because Bird’s own children would eventually be old enough to come through the program.

“I was enjoying that role,” Bird said. “I loved the role that I was playing under him.”

Now, Bird has been asked to lead the program himself, but he does not see the change as a complete departure from what Lovelady football has been.

Instead, he sees himself carrying forward a culture that was already established by the community, the school and the players who came before him.

Bird was born into coaching. His father coached for 50 years and was once the athletic director at Lovelady. The family moved throughout East Texas during Bird’s childhood, and Bird attended school in Groveton, Lovelady and Troup before completing high school in Groveton.

He played two years at Navarro Junior College and two years at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor before beginning his coaching career.

Bird’s coaching stops have included Waller, Groveton, Ganado and Bangs. He served as a secondary coach, offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator and head coach before eventually returning home to Lovelady.

At one point, Bird had hoped to step away from the athletic director’s chair and spend more time with his young children. When an opportunity opened at Lovelady, however, he contacted Kirchhoff about an assistant coaching position.

“It was a God thing,” Bird said. “I needed a step back. I needed to work for a quality person and a program with a lot of the same beliefs that I have. It was the perfect marriage there.”

Bird said the strength of Lovelady’s athletic program begins well before an athlete ever walks onto the field.

“It starts with our community,” he said. “We’ve got great parents that expect to have high expectations of their kids. They want their kids to be good adults.”

Bird said Lovelady parents want their children to be good people, students and leaders. They also expect them to work hard, compete and give their best effort.

“When they come to us, they’ve always got such a head start on the foundation of what we need to build on,” he said.

That support extends into the school district, Bird said. He described the superintendent, principals, administrators and school board as supportive of the athletic program and its expectations.

“When the expectation of the family and the school is to be successful and to give it your all, the kids are going to be a product of that,” Bird said.

The Lions’ approach is built around maximizing the time they have each day. Bird repeated a line Coach K often used with players:

“The only thing we have in common with our opponents is time.”

Everything else, Bird said, comes down to how a program uses that time and what it is willing to demand from its athletes.

Lovelady players have embraced that approach, he said. They want to be challenged, they want to be pushed and they have developed a willingness to keep working when conditions are not ideal.

“If you want to be different, you have to do different things,” Bird said.

Bird said the current Lovelady team is not especially large and does not have a great deal of depth. What it does have, he said, is a strong group of senior leaders who care about one another and about the success of the team.

“We’re kind of thin right now,” he said. “We don’t have a ton of depth, but we’ve got what I would say would be some tremendous senior leadership.”

Bird said the seniors are willing to put the success of their teammates and the program ahead of their own individual accomplishments.

“They care a whole lot about each other,” he said. “They care about the success of their friend and their teammate, even over their own success. That makes them strong in some ways.”

The Lions are also preparing for another challenge that has become part of the football calendar in Texas: UIL heat and wet-bulb regulations.

Bird said the rules have changed how many schools organize practices, particularly when temperatures and humidity reach levels that trigger restrictions. Depending on the conditions, practices may be limited to two hours, with restrictions on full pads, or reduced further to one hour with significant time required for water breaks.

At the most restrictive level, teams cannot practice outdoors at all.

“We’ve been fortunate so far,” Bird said. “We haven’t had to move anything to the mornings yet.”

If conditions require it, Lovelady can move some work into the gym, use the athletic period during the school day or shift weightlifting and film study to the afternoon.

The restrictions create challenges for football programs because indoor work cannot completely replace time on the field. Coaches can lift weights and conduct productive workouts in the gym, Bird said, but they cannot throw the ball or work on pass defense in the same way.

Still, Bird said Lovelady players have learned to treat difficult conditions as an opportunity.

“If the weather’s terrible, if the temperature’s not optimal, all of these things make it a day that we call a Lovelady day,” he said. “Because on those days, we’re going to go perform.”

Bird said the Lions have adjusted their scrimmage times when necessary and will continue to do whatever is required to prepare.

“I told the kids I don’t want them whining about it,” he said. “We love playing ball, and we’re going to do what we need to do to play ball.”

Bird believes the work ethic he sees in Lovelady athletes extends beyond football.

He said the players are willing to work summer jobs, help their families and take on difficult tasks such as baling hay in the heat.

“Kids are kids,” Bird said. “Kids are the same today as they were 100 years ago when it comes to what the nature of a kid is. But culture does play a part.”

In Lovelady, he said, many students still spend time working outdoors and learning the value of physical effort.

“Luckily, in these small rural towns, especially ours, we don’t have as much of a problem there as maybe some others,” Bird said. “When you’ve got kids that are wired like that, you’ve got an advantage.”

That advantage, Bird believes, will continue to shape the Lovelady Lions as he moves from defensive coordinator to the head of the program he has helped build for the past seven seasons.

Greg Ritchie can be reached at [email protected]