As I talked to new Southside High School head football coach Daniel Flowers during Monday’s Dallas County School Board meeting, he talked about how he wanted to lead a program like Southside — a program that had been down and out for years and needed to be rebuilt.

The thing that stood out about Flowers was that he spoke with passion and seemed truly excited about the opportunity to turn the Panthers’ program around.

I just hope he gets the time he needs.

In the year that I’ve been with the Times-Journal, I’ve observed a lot of coaching turnover.

At two county schools in particular, players have been left wondering who their head coach will be more than a couple of times.

At Southside and Dallas County high schools, some players are looking at their third head coach in three years.

In some respects, it’s understandable.

School systems around the state are having to deal with budget cuts and, as a result, are having to cut personnel in schools in order to make sure they have enough money to operate.

Head coaches have to be employed at another position at the school alongside their coaching duties.

And naturally, since a lot of coaches are usually physical education instructors, they’re usually among the first to go with cuts.

That’s all well and good, but my thing is this: don’t be surprised when your football programs suffer for it.

It has to be frustrating to fans, players, parents and the coaches themselves when every time they look up, a coach is having to be replaced, and the direct correlation to that is losses on the field.

We’ve seen coaches work wonders before, but it’s hard to win if the coach doesn’t get the time to build a program up.

Rebuilding a program takes time — two or three years and even longer in some cases.

Think of who suffers the most in the situation where a coach is replaced after one year — the players.

As I mentioned before, there are players in the county who are having to learn new plays, formations and schemes for the third year in a row.

It’s hard to beat teams who’ve been under the same coaches for years when you’ve just learned your offense last month, no matter how talented you are.

To all local coaches, good luck with the upcoming season, and I hope you get the time you need to lead your respective programs upward, because you deserve it.

And to the school boards, I know these are tough times, but if you want to see positive results on the field with the areas young athletes, the coaches are going to need time to implement their systems, get to know their players and build the relationships necessary that lead to winning games.