Regardless of the sport of the level of competition, most coaches relish the opportunity to lead their alma mater. Joe Polce has been given that chance. The Walkersville alum, who was the school's defensive coordinator last year, was promoted to head coach on February 26.

Polce took over the program after Ryan Hines left for local-rival Urbana. His immediate task is to restore a winning tradition to a school that hasn't made the playoffs in six seasons, despite finishing 6-4 last year.

Polce started his coaching career as an assistant at Middletown and Urbana. His first head coaching stint came with Urbana in 2005. Polce spent four years as the Hawks' head coach, compiling a 33-14 record and making the playoffs each season. He resigned after his fourth season and spent 2009 as the defensive coordinator at Walkersville.

When Hines left for Urbana, Polce was the natural successor. No other candidates were interviewed for the position.

Earlier this week, MdHigh publisher Dave Lomonico spoke with Polce about his new position.

It means a lot. It's special to give back to the community where you grew up. My family has been around here since the early '70s; we live in the feeder area in Woodsboro. Other than when I went away to college, I never really left Frederick County. I knew I wanted to come back and be at my home school.

The program has been down a little bit, so the challenge is getting the kids to believe they can win. And win on a consistent basis.

I always believe confidence comes from strength. So we've been all over the guys after school in the weight room. We've shown them encouragement and pushed them hard. They guys are responding. They're working harder than they've ever worked.

I think once you get strong you get confident. That will carry over into your season. Last year we had a talented team but didn't get it done in the big games. I'm hoping this extra work will make the difference and push us over the top.

At Urbana we were able to read and smash and stay real disciplined. But you have to be able to change based on your personnel. Here at Walkersville it's a little more of a read-and-react type defense. We take some more chances and play aggressively.

We're going to bring multiple fronts depending on what the other team has. We're going to show four-man fronts, five-man fronts, even six-man fronts. We try to mix it up to make the offense think and work. We try to create situations where we can make big plays.

It worked pretty well last year. We had three shutouts and Walkersville hadn't had any shutouts since 2004. We had more shutouts in one year than the last five put together.

We're going to feature our two running backs, Quentin [Ezell] and Jose [Depadua]. On some plays one will block and the other will run behind him … and vice versa. We're going to have some misdirection, we're going to have some power plays, some off-tackles.

At Urbana we ran the football a whole lot. Three out of the four years I was there we had a 1,000-plus yard rusher and one year we had a 2,000-yard rusher. I've had success with it in the past, so you can expect to see a lot of running.

I enjoyed working with Ryan a lot. He was a great coach and we're friends. But he decided to leave and the opportunity was there for me to take over.

It was an honor for me to get the job and I'm going to work as hard as I can to bring the winning tradition back to Walkersville.

I think we're going to be a little more disciplined. If the kids are going to play, they're going to have to lift weights, they're going to have to run and stay conditioned, and when the season starts it's got to be all football all the time. That's what we did at Urbana. That's how you become successful.

I only know one way to coach, and that's to go all-out.

When I got the Urbana job I was so excited I had to scramble and find guys [assistant coaches]. This is my second time around so I was a little more prepared. I knew right away the guys I wanted to work with. You can't run a program by yourself. You have to surround yourself with great people.

It helped that no body really left from the past staff here at Walkersville. But I did bring in two big guys right away. One is Todd Tunneo, who was my offensive coordinator at Urbana and will be the offensive coordinator here at Walkersville. He was the head coach at Damascus in the '90s and won a state championship.

And then we're brining in [former Urbana coach] Dave Carruthers as a special consultant. He's going to work with us as much as he wants to. Right now he comes in every Tuesday and does some motivational speaking and counsels the kids. Any time you can get a guy with that pedigree around is a big plus.

I learned from some of the best coaches this area has ever had. I worked under Tim Ambrose at Middletown, and I worked under Dave Carruthers at Urbana. I saw how those guys became successful. They did it through discipline and constant hard work.

That's what works. So that's what we're going to do.

Yeah, definitely. I have a son that's 9 and I actually coached his pony team last year, which went 11-1 and won the league. And I plan to coach them again this year. So I know every kid his age and even some younger. I've taught those kids how to block, how to tackle, all the fundamentals. So I have strong ties there and expect them to be contributors for us down the road.

Besides that, I have strong tires to the feeder program and the commissioner of the youth program. There's a great relationship there. We hope that pays off.

The main thing is restore pride and respectability to the program. There was a time in the late '80s to mid-'90s when Dave Schroeder was the head coach and he took Walkersville to the state championship three of the seven years he coached. So it's only been recently that the program has fallen off a little bit.

So obviously I want to win. The last time this school won a championship was 1987. I'd definitely like to do that again. We have the talent and it would be great to make that big push for a state championship.

But I'm realistic, too, and I know at a small school your probably can't do that every year. I'd at least like to make this school a respectable opponent to play. In other words, I want teams to know when they play Walkersville it's going to be a hard fought, hard-hitting game.