Tyson Moore’s high school football head coaching experience has been compressed into one fall, but he has been around the game his whole life so he feels older than 28 in dog years.

The Seymour rookie head man brings the Owls to Columbus East Friday night for Hoosier Hills Conference game noting the last time he stepped foot on that field was a playoff loss when he was a member of the Olympians.

Oct. 29, 2010 was the date, and it rolls off Moore’s tongue without research. His coach? Bob Gaddis, still the Olympians’ coach, who has some of the same assistants Moore knew then.

"I think the world of those guys," Moore said. "Now I want to beat them. That’s my alma mater. I respect them."

[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery

Moore may not have completed his first season as the boss of a program, but his institutional memory of Indiana football dates back because his father, Eric, is the long-time coach at Center Grove.

Hired in May, running practices and conditioning over the summer under COVID-19 social distancing rules, and now with a 3-4 record entering Friday’s game, Moore said he feels more mature.

As a new young coach, Moore said "You think you have everything figured out." Then the game starts and you quickly shift from Plan A to Plan B to Plan C.

"We adjust here and there," he said. "I’ve had to take steps back and realize, ‘This isn’t going to work.’ From August to where we are now, I’ve grown a lot."

Coincidental with the timing of lining up against his old coach, Moore said he talked to his dad over the weekend and told him, "I get it now. I get a lot of what my coaches said.

"You gain an understanding of when you were a player of what your coaches were frustrated about."

Publicized coaching wisdom means more to Moore now than it did. He cited a comment issued by Nick Saban, the Alabama coach who has won six national college championships. "The second you as a coach think you know everything, it’s probably time to retire," Moore quoted Saban.

Every coach develops a philosophy, Moore said, "what you want to be known for. This is what our program is going to look like."

The boiled-down primary word applied to all aspects of his football team, Moore said, is "Discipline." Disciplined play on offense, defense and special teams, but also a disciplined look in public for the way players dress and behave.

"Do things right. Having character among yourselves. Having your chin strap buckled. Don’t be wearing yellow shorts when everyone else is wearing blue shorts. The fine little details. Little things like this carry over into professional life."

When the players go out into the business world and come to work, "They’re not going to let you dress sloppy," he said. He wants his teams "to carry themselves the way a great football team does."

Some of this fundamental thinking was absorbed playing for Gaddis at Columbus East and being around and working as an assistant coach with his father coaching."

Columbus East is 5-2 this year with Gaddis a 42-year coach with a 327-142 mark on his resume. Eric Moore, 7-0 this season, is in his 26th season of coaching with a 251-77 mark. The younger Moore is at least a quarter of a century behind their pace.

Moore will probably some day discuss how the hard loses hurt more than the pleasant victories feel and he already has two of those this season than can drive a coach crazy.

In an almost impossible finish, Seymour lost the Jackson Bowl to Brownstown Central, 43-42, with three lead changes in the final minute. Then a week later, the Owls lost by a touchdown to New Albany

That game was irritating not only because it was a close loss, but because the visitors ran up 215 yards in penalties, accumulated 11 unsportsmanlike or personal foul penalties, and had three players thrown out of the game. That is not what Moore considers disciplined behavior.

The Owls are better than their record shows because of those two losses, he said.

"What makes it even worse, you can’t change it," Moore said. "They’re going to be in the loss column forever."