Top coach in OVC FB is searching for ways to be even better in 2023

If there is a football coach – at any level – throughout Southeast Missouri that has earned the right to chill a bit this off-season, it would be 10th-year Southeast Missouri State coach Tom Matukewicz.

“Coach Tuke” led the Redhawks to a 9-3 season last fall, won the program’s second Ohio Valley Conference championship in the past four seasons, and was named the league’s Coach of the Year for the second time.

However, everybody in the SEMO football program, including Matukewicz, has a detailed ‘Get Better Plan’ that they are to address and attack this off-season.

“Everybody has a ‘Get Better Plan,’” Matukewicz explained, “and mine is pretty long.”

For those that believe that the 2023 football season is seven months away, they would be mistaken.

From Matukewicz on down, all of the Redhawks have already mentally started the clock on the 2023 season.

“My goal in life is to not be the same ‘Coach Tuke’ this year that I was last year,” Matukewicz said. “Once you start getting good, it is hard to get better.”

Now, imagine if you were GREAT like Matukewicz has been.

He not only had a tremendous year, but he’s also had a record-shattering career in Cape Girardeau. Yet here he is in February, asking his players and assistant coaches to evaluate HIM.

As Matukewicz noted, his list of self-improvements is “pretty long,” but for example, he wants to address the leadership of his program more efficiently than in years past.

The Redhawks typically name captains during the summer, but Matukewicz feels it is imperative to have the 2023 leaders named at the end of spring football.

“Elevating those types of things,” Matukewicz said. “There are a lot of little things that I have to do a better job of.”

He also mentioned focusing on “first and second down and base concepts,” as well as “getting better in critical situations,”

“When we play an Eastern Kentucky,” Matukewicz said, “a Southern Illinois, or a Montana, whatever those types of games are, and it comes down to four or five plays in critical situations, we need to be great at those.

“That is something, as a program, that we have to improve and really work on, even in January.”

Matukewicz is already the program’s all-time winningest coach at the NCAA Division I level with 50 victories.

He has led the Redhawks to the FCS Playoffs three times, which is far and away the most of any coach in SEMO history. However, in addressing his program overall, not himself, specifically, he said improving on success is much more difficult than growing earlier in his career.

“Once you start getting good,” Matukewicz said, “it is hard to get better. If you suck, you should get better tomorrow. But when you are operating at a decent level, it is extremely hard just to get little improvements.

“People just don’t understand, just how hard it is to get better, once you are pretty good.”