My name is Ian Rapanick and I am currently the head football coach at Perquimans County High School in Hertford, North Carolina. I began coaching as a student assistant at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. I started my high school coaching career during my senior year at ODU and have been coaching high school football ever since. I had stints at Hickory High School in Chesapeake, VA, Nansemond River High School in Suffolk, VA, and was most recently the head coach at Norview High School in Norfolk, VA before coming to Perquimans County.

Since beginning my QB Academy 4 years ago at Norview, we have seen an influx in quarterback play in our program. We had 2 quarterbacks over my 3 years at Norview and both were able to pass for over 1,500 yards, one of which was during a shortened covid season that only allowed us to play 6 games. We have simplified our offense for the QB so they can make great decisions on where to go with the football and how to get it there. We begin from the bottom up and discuss four components of being a QB. These 4 components include being a great decision maker, being calm under pressure, leadership skills, and understanding defenses. Throughout this 8 week Academy, we break down these things with our quarterbacks and spend 2 weeks on each component of being a great quarterback. We meet in the mornings and during our quarterback's lunch period to go over these things in major detail. We have found that it causes our QB's to grow up and mature more quickly when they fully understand what it means to be the starting quarterback.

This is not something that we take lightly and fully believe that there are character traits that make great quarterbacks and our jobs as coaches is to bring out those traits. We have done the Academy with 1 rising sophomore, and 1 rising junior, I am currently doing my QB Academy at Perquimans with a rising sophomore as well. I believe that it makes younger QB's understand how important it is to show leadership capabilities sooner so they can take control of the program and get the remainder of the team to follow them.