St. Joseph’s Prep’s Tim Roken shares what coaching a top-notch football program looks like

If you Google the country’s best high school football programs, St. Joseph’s Prep will show up on a number of those lists.

For multiple years, the Prep has been known as one of the best spots to develop young athletes into future NFL prospects, while also giving them an opportunity to earn college scholarships.

It took time to build that structure. Tim Roken, St. Joseph’s Prep head coach, has seen that process first hand when he joined the staff as a quarterbacks coach in 2010 under former head coach Gabe Infante, now a defensive analyst and analytics coordinator for Penn State.

Roken, an Archbishop Ryan grad who played quarterback at East Stroudsburg, saw the commitment that Infante had to create a pristine football program — the 6 a.m. practices, finding a space to hold games without an on-campus field, and helping student-athletes with the rigorous academics.

It prepared Roken to take over the helm in 2019. In the past five years, he has developed top-notch talent (the Eagles’ D’Andre Swift, Ohio State’s Marvin Harrison Jr., and Clemson’s Jeremiah Trotter Jr., to name a few) and led the Prep to four state title appearances, three of which the team came out on the winning end.

The group finished 12-1 last season and hopes to defend its PIAA Class 6A state title this year. But first, Saturday’s season opener against the nationally-ranked IMG Academy at Ocean City High School. Roken, however, isn’t one to get caught up in the rankings, he said.

“It doesn’t matter who we’re playing,” Roken said Tuesday at the school. “I told the guys, ‘We’ve had undefeated state championship teams here, but what’s going to separate you; what is going to be different about you guys?’ That’s up to them to write their story this year.”

The Inquirer sat down with Roken, who offered his insight about what has made the program successful and expectations for this year’s group, which is considered one of his biggest team’s with 102 players.

Q: When you joined former head coach Gabe Infante’s staff in 2010, who were the people that you’ve learned from that helped prepare you to take over the head position in 2019?

A: When I first got here, I told Gabe I wanted to coach in college; that was my initial thought, because before I came to St. Joe’s Prep I was working with kids at the All-American game. All those kids were going to go play in the top colleges and potentially go play in the NFL. I wanted to coach that athlete. I was 23 when I first started here, and then I realized real quick, the appreciation for developing the young man, the kid at this level, and watching them go and do great things at the next level. I think as the years went on, I was less enamored with coaching at the college level and more diving into being here.

My goal was just to match Gabe step by step, because I could see early on he was very special in terms of how he coached, and the family atmosphere that he built here and the high standards that he set for our program. A lot of people laughed at him and us earlier on when we got started. We were 11-11 in our first two years. His goal was always to become a national program. But it’s more about how we do things across the board and just making sure that we are top of the line in terms of how we handle our business, how we practice, how we travel, how we watch film, how we are in the weight room, nutrition, and all those different things. We wanted to be as close to a college program as we could.

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Q: Looking back on your first year as a head coach to this point, are there any lessons learned or anything you changed to develop your own system?

A: I think it’s just continuing to evolve. People from the outside think we’re this powerhouse football program that gets kids from five different states and all this stuff. It’s very challenging, it’s a great opportunity, but it’s very challenging. You have to absolutely be open to growth, kids are going to be held to a very high standard academically, you’re going to get pushed outside your comfort zone, and not be around your friends as much. These families have picked us to send their son here and they make a commitment to get their kid here every day, whether it’s on the bus or Uber or driving themselves. There’s a view of us from the outside because of our success, but there’s not a lot of people that realize how much goes into it behind the scenes. It takes a village to build this thing. I take it very seriously that my name gets written on it, but there is not a lack of support.

Q: Over the last five years, the program has developed players to the professional and college level. What goes into developing these athletes to play beyond high school?

A: It’s the little things. We do drills and ask them to touch a line or run through the line or how we go about a stretch and how we go about our preparation of watching film, so there’s a lot of little things and little drills that we do in practice that may seem to a 14-15 year old kid not as important, but you can’t lose the fundamentals. And it’s creating a competitive environment, respecting each other as a competitor, and trying to get the most out of these guys, because we don’t want them to look back on their four years and feel like they didn’t give their best effort. It’s going to take sacrifice, it’s going to take extreme self-discipline, and there’s no guarantee you will have more opportunity for success if you commit yourself to that process. It’s going to have some adversity, that process is going to have good days and bad days. It’s working through them, leaning on the people that are around you, and striving every day to be the best version of yourself.

Q: This year’s roster includes multiple standouts. What have you seen from the seniors, more in particular your quarterback Samaj Jones, who’s committed to play football at Cincinnati?

A: His maturity over his time here has been a pretty special deal. His freshman year was the COVID year and I was very adamant about trying to get him on the field and play some games because we had really special seniors that year, like Kyle McCord and Marvin Harrison Jr. A lot of these guys could look up to them and understand how you go about your business. The biggest change for Samaj was sophomore and junior year. In the offseason, a lot of coaches came in and asked him if he was going to be a quarterback, because of the way he was built and how he could run. I think he kind of had a chip on his shoulder and put in the extra work in the offseason. He would have struggles at times, whether it was getting to practice or waking up on time. He learned from those experiences. Now he’s the one calling guys and waking them up.

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Q: Whether it’s the game against IMG Academy or any game coming into the season, what is the mindset that you tried to put forth to the team?

A: It’s preparation, we got to win the game during the week. We can’t focus on the outcome of Saturday, we have to focus on how we are getting better in practice every day, so that the games are easy and come easy to them. They play with confidence and enjoy themselves, because they prepare so hard all week, and to make sure that we go out there and control our emotions. Being able to play on ESPN is amazing and the magnitude of this [IMG] game in terms of rankings is great. Not a lot of high schools get that opportunity to do that. But we got to stay focused on the job that needs to be done. It’s blocking out the noise.