Nashua North football coach Chad Zibolis talks to hie players during his first official practice Friday as the Titans head coach. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – Chad Zibolis decided to take one last day of summer before the grind would begin, enjoying some time with his family and even took his boat out solo on Lake Winnipesaukee to chill.

He put his phone away. When he came back, he had 40 emails from parents, etc.

Those were emails he’d never have to see as an assistant coach at Nashua North. But now as the Titans new head man, they now all come to him.

“That’s the different part,” he said. “When I was the O-Line guy, I didn’t have to deal with anything.”

Except football. He didn’t even have to prepare a talk for the first day as an assistant. But he did on Friday. Football practices began at high schools all over the state. Teams will have scrimmages as well over the next couple of weeks and the regular season begins Friday and Saturday of Labor Day Weekend, Sept. 2-3. Zibolis’ game debut will be when North opens at Stellos Stadium on that Friday vs. Bedford, and on that Saturday evening Nashua South and Bishop Guertin will clash at Stellos as well.

“It felt a little different being on the sidelines in the gym,” Zibolis said. “Usually I’m not doing the talking, Dante Laurendi is talking. Or (former head coach Jason) Robie was talking or (South coach Scott) Knight was talking. It felt good. I was prepared for it, I know what I want to do and I knew what I wanted to do coming in. It felt good being out here in charge. … It feels good being in charge, I like it.”

Zibolis is big on conditioning, and he took a page from one of his mentors from his playing days at the unified Nashua High, former Panthers coach Bill Hardy. North players were running up and down hills, etc. Back then, though, there were double sessions. Now the second sessions are either meetings or simple walk-throughs, not full practices, by rule. The break was that the most recent heat wave had ended, otherwise football coaches all over the area and the state would have been very restricted in what could be done outside.

“This is a little bit of Bill Hardy stuff,” Zibolis said. “Two sets of circuits, gassers (quick sprints), that type of stuff. That’s an old Bill Hardy method. … We would do this both sessions. This would be both sessions. But now we only have one session, so you have to work hard.

“They did well. You can see the kids who have been here all summer long, you can tell.”

Zibolis had several athletes come for the allowed informal summer workouts, both outside and in the weight room, and the Titans, like some other teams, played in a 7 on 7 league, theirs in Dracut,Mass.

“You can see it out here already,” he said.

Things were slowed down during the rough days of COVID, so Zibolis says for the seniors they will have to adjust to a more physical training camp.

“The older kids aren’t used to it,” he said. “They have to get back into reality a little bit. It’s exciting. Being positive is a huge thing. The accent is on being positive.”

Zibolis said that having the entire staff back helped things feel more normal, but he noted that it was very different in other respects without his mentor and good friend Laurendi, who decided back in February he needed to take a break from the rigors of being a head coach, and Zibolis was the natural candidate to succeed him.

“It was obviously a lot different not having Dante there,” he said.

Zibolis started in the spring in trying to build the numbers. He recruited a lot of athletes for wrestling the last few years as the Titans head coach in that sport – a position he had to relinquish to devote more time to football – and he took the same approach with the grid game, as Friday afternoon he was set to welcome some 45 freshmen. “It worked,” he said. “The problem is it’s a lot easier pulling them in. And you get 120 kids.”

But the paperwork, the nitty gritty, impact testing,etc. when he was wrestling coach that would already be done for the athletes who competed in the fall. There was less on the administrative side.

Football’s different, and now the fun begins. Ziblolis knows practices are never really fun, but he gave his players one message: stay the course.

“Don’t go home now,” he said, “and not come back. It will get better.”

Yes, football’s back, and the days on the lake are pretty much done.

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