There were a lot of kids in Jim Corkum’s swimming pool. Like, a whole football team’s worth.
It was the middle of the summer, peak time of year for oppressive heat and sticky humidity. Instead of having his players sweat it out on the football field, Corkum invited them to his house for a barbecue.
He was just about to begin his second season as the head coach of Concord football, a program he starred for 20 years ago. It felt like the right moment for team bonding.
“These are kids. They want to do kid things, and they want to have fun, and they want to enjoy each other outside of the grind of what can be a football practice and getting ready for a season,” Corkum said. “Years later, you’re not gonna remember necessarily the games or the scores of games — there might be some of that — but the things you remember are the times you spent with your teammates, and I think it’s important not to lose sight of that.”
At the time, it was something fun for his players to do. But as they look back on it now, in the midst of a 5-2 season that’s surprised almost everyone, it was the start of a new chapter.
“In my four years playing for Concord, we’ve never really had a connection off the field. It was more of just an on-field thing,” senior quarterback Zack Doward said. “Now we’re having team gatherings and pool parties at the coach’s house.”
The COVID-19 pandemic is in large part to blame for the off-field isolation for this group of players. But this represented more than just a return to normal; it was an embrace of something fresh.
“We were like, ‘If we’re gonna be a good team this season, we need to have a better bond, we need to be together, know what everybody’s doing and have each other’s backs at all times,’” junior running back Eli Bahuma said.
Added senior lineman Rasheed Ahmed: “It’s been amazing. I love these guys. They’re like my second family.”
So far, it’s translated to on-field success. With one game left to play in the regular season, Concord’s nearly doubled its win total from Corkum’s first year and put itself in prime position to reach the playoffs for the first time since 2014.
The Tide have scored 42 points or more in five of their seven games, in large part because of Bahuma’s prowess on the ground. They’ve also held their opponents to 15 points or fewer three times this season.
They suffered a demoralizing loss last Friday at home against Windham. Concord led 21-0 at halftime but then allowed 30 unanswered points to one of the top teams in Division I. The game took the Tide into uncharted waters — a high-intensity battle with playoff implications in late October.
And even though Concord may not have been fully up to the task in its biggest game of the season so far, the mere fact the Tide made it to this position speaks volumes about the trust Corkum’s earned from his players. They believe in him; they want to play hard for him; they look up to him as a role model.
“He’s just a great person, great coach and just all around involved in everything,” Bahuma said. “He always tries to make everything around him better as a coach and as a person in general.”
When Corkum took the job before the 2021 season, he was clear-eyed on what needed to be done – keep things simple. He’d been an assistant coach at Concord under his former head coach Bob Camirand and his predecessor Eric Brown, both leaders of state championship teams, so he knew what had worked in the past and what didn’t.
“I know it sounds like blasphemy this day and age, but coming in, I said, ‘I think we need to get back under center, we need to simplify things a little bit, we need to get the kids playing faster and more aggressive,’” he said, thinking back to his interview. “What we’re seeing now is the kids have bought into that and see the success it can have.”
Modifying the X’s and O’s were surely important to Corkum as he embarked on this journey, but so was creating the right environment for his players to learn and play the game. He consistently stresses the intangibles that so many coaches preach: effort, commitment, discipline, toughness. But it’s one thing to repeat abstract phrases to 16, 17 and 18-year-old boys. It’s another to take the time to explain why they’re important.
He thinks of establishing the culture like an engineer thinks about a structurally-sound house: If you come to practice every day and play hard, listen to the coaches and be respectful to your teammates, that creates a strong foundation to build on. So, that’s more time they can spend focusing on implementing different schemes and preparing for the next opponent. In other words, in order to have success putting together the product that everyone sees on gameday, the “non-football things” as Corkum calls them, need to be taken care of first.
Corkum’s also well aware that even though his team plays in Division I, Concord’s not exactly burgeoning with a stable of the state’s best football players. That only further underscores why creating the right culture for his players is so strongly correlated with the team having success.
“We may not always have the most stellar, blue-chip athletes,” he said. “But if we have tough kids who are coachable and can do things that are simple and fast, I think you’re gonna find a lot of success.”
It’s a two-way street, though. Corkum can have the perfect vision for what makes a winning football team, but the players have to understand and appreciate that as well. The fact that this group does, makes things much easier.
“I’m just having a blast because the kids are so great. They love to be out there, they want to get better,” Corkum said. “They come from all different walks of life, but you get them out there on the football field at 3:30 everyday, and they’re just so much fun to be around and coach.”
If you’ve gone to a Concord football game this season, it’s almost a guarantee that you’ve seen Bahuma score a TD — even in Friday’s loss he ran for three scores. And what’s more remarkable is that it’s just his second year playing football.
He’s not what you’d expect a star running back to look like — Corkum describes him as short and stocky. But he sees the field better than players who’ve played the game for way longer. Even in practice, the way he decisively curls his way through the smallest of holes will make you stop and question how he’s only played for two years.
It all kind of started on a whim.
“One day my freshman year my friends told me to come try football, and I just loved it,” Bahuma said.
Heading into his sophomore season, he suffered a broken ankle during a scrimmage, so he missed all of 2021, but he’s worked tirelessly to continually improve at his position.
In July, Corkum woke up one morning to a message from Bahuma that he’d sent at 1:30 a.m. He hit a 400-pound deadlift at the 24-hour gym and wanted to let Corkum know right away.
“He’s just a phenomenal kid, football aside,” Corkum said. “He’s a great student, he’s humble, everybody likes him.”
Corkum occupies a unique position in addition to his football responsibilities: assistant principal at Concord high.
He always lets his players know that if there’s something going on in school, it’ll certainly be brought to his attention.
“We preach very hard about being positive representatives of the football program no matter where you are, whether it’s in school, in the community,” he said. “If there’s ever a time where that starts to fall off, being one of the assistant principals, I’m going to be the first to know about it. I’m going to be able to address it very quickly.”
Beyond the disciplinarian side of his administrative role, he’s able to fully immerse himself in his players’ lives — what their interests are, what they’re passionate about, what their family is going through.
It not only adds a more holistic perspective to how he approaches his role on the football field, it enhances how he can help each individual student-athlete achieve their goals.
“At the end of the day, playing high school football is great, but you need to make sure you graduate from high school and have a direction,” he said.
It could understandably become tricky for players to navigate playing for someone who also has such a large role inside the high school. But for Bahuma, it’s the ideal blend.
“He makes sure football is not the only thing and that we’re focused in school, too,” he said. “If I’m slipping in my classes, he’s the first person to tell me that I need to keep working hard.”
And perhaps, it should make perfect sense that Corkum has excelled in navigating this dual role because he was once in his players’ shoes. He understands what they’re going through. He also understands why it’s so important for him to try to help continually steer them in the right direction.
Besides the time he spent playing football at Merrimack College, he’s always called Concord home. It’s no coincidence that he’s worked in the area since graduating, even while he pursued his Master’s degree in education. And now, he’s at a point where he’s not just working where he grew up, he’s helping give back to the community that gave him so much.
“I had good experiences as a kid here, both from being in school and playing sports, and I think that just speaks to the type of people this community draws,” Corkum said. “It’s such a supportive community. It’s just a really good place to be, a good place to work. I’m very fortunate that I get to coach these kids.”