Lake Buena Vista football’s old-school approach leading to bright future

With a shaved head, semi-permanent scowl on his face and a physical build that just screams he wakes up at 4 a.m. every day to get in a lift at the local gym, you might assume Brant Peddy is either a drill sergeant or a football coach cut from the same cloth as Mike Ditka or Mike Tomlin.

Peddy’s appearance isn’t a facade. The second-year coach of the Lake Buena Vista Vipers exudes the classic ideals of the game of football: toughness, grit, discipline, brotherhood, belief and a pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps attitude.

In today’s era of football, Peddy’s approach may not be for everyone. That’s fine. Just don’t be caught off-guard when your team plays the Vipers, and Peddy’s players smack you in the mouth for four quarters straight.

“I just want our kids to be a nightmare for everybody we play,” Peddy said. “I want teams when we finish playing, win or lose, whatever, I want them to say that we’re a nightmare (to play). I want these kids to compete. I want them to put in the effort and have discipline. A lot of times, and it happened in a couple of games last year, wins and losses come down to effort and discipline.”

Before and After

This approach is hard. It requires sacrifice, commitment and a level of toughness — both mentally and physically — that isn’t as prevalent in football as it was in years past. Still, if you’re able to get your players to buy in, well, the results speak for themselves. 

In the two seasons before Peddy arrived at LBV, the Vipers had a record of 1-19. Last season, Peddy’s first, the Vipers finished with a 5-4 record and already have picked up another win so far in 2024; despite having two games suspended because of weather. 

“Coach has brought a lot of feistiness to the team; he does a really good job of getting us to channel our anger on the field,” said LBV senior lineman Jonathan Robinson, who has been part of the program for all four years of its existence. “He wants us all to be mean and show that grit that we all are born with on the field. The first couple of years, the team really struggled, we had a lot of bad losses. Then, this past year, you could see how much we all grew closer as a team and really showed what we are capable of. We want to keep that momentum going this year and be great.”

Senior athlete Erik Denico agrees and points to the attitude change among the players during Peddy’s tenure.

“Coach really brought a high level of intensity that we needed, something that I think we lacked in the two seasons before he got here,” Denico said. “He just brought out the dog in all of us, which is exactly the type of energy we needed. It was very just lackluster before, we just doubted ourselves before games. We were always doubted by people outside of the program and still are really but we like that now. We like being the underdogs, having that chip on our shoulders. We’ve used that as fuel to get us amped up to play in these football games.”

Football is family

Through this high-intensity and disciplined approach to program building, the Vipers have done more than become better football players. These student-athletes have learned what it means to sacrifice for one another; they’ve learned what it’s like to be accountable to one another. That sort of connection builds a bond rarely found outside of a team sports context. 

“We’re a brotherhood,” Robinson said. “We make sure that we take responsibility for what we do and are accountable to each other. We don’t make excuses; that’s kind of our thing here. We don’t make excuses for how we play or when we have a bad day. We lift each other up and just keep it moving and focus on doing our jobs and getting better.”

Players such as Robinson and Denico, who have been part of this program for its entire four-year existence, have helped forge this sense of family and brotherhood into the team’s culture because of the sense of ownership they have for the program. 

“We’re a family first,” Denico said. “No matter what, we all just want to play together, and because this program is so young, we know that what we’re doing each time we go out on the field for a game or for practice, we’re building something that didn’t exist a few years back. We are the start of something new that will hopefully last for a very long time. Everything we’re doing now, from our traditions to our identity as a team, it’s establishing what the future of the team is going to look like. The fact that we’re the leaders of everything about this program really brings us together.”

This sort of connection, this brotherhood, is easy to proclaim when things are going right. It’s easy to say the team is a family when you’re undefeated and not facing a lick of adversity. It’s when it all starts to crumble on the field when you see the true representation of a team’s culture. 

The future is bright

In its 35-7 Week Four loss to West Orange High, Peddy saw the results of his old-school football approach on full display.

“They showed a lot of heart and a lot of effort tonight,” he said following the loss. “Nobody got down on themselves. There was no bickering or fighting on the sideline. It was everybody trying to get everybody built up and focused on fighting to the very end. You go into a ball game like this, and adversity hits right off the bat and you, as the coach, start to worry, and ask yourself: ‘How are they going to respond? Are they going to get down on themselves? Are they going to start playing the blame game?’ These guys didn’t, it was a lot of positive talk over here on our sideline. 

“Now, it’s just a matter of learning from our mistakes on the field,” he said. “It’s all a process, and we’ll get there, because the kids have really bought in. Every week, they come in ready to practice, and we don’t have a bad practice. The kids are normally locked in. They’re doing what they’re supposed to do. It’s just a matter of learning more about the game.”

Sophomore athlete Joshua Eady doesn’t know what high school football looked like at LBV before his current coach took over. 

Like the comic book villain Bane from the Batman chronicles, his football identity was figuratively born in Peddy’s program of discipline and toughness. So, when he looks at what the future may look like for the Vipers, he expects his team to be in the same conversation with the area’s other top teams in the coming years.

“I want this football program to be looked at like the DPs and the Ocoees of the world,” Eady said. “When you think of LBV now, people doubt us because of how young the school is, having only been around for like four years. But with what we’re building here, I want people in the future to think of us like they think about West Orange; that LBV’s a powerhouse.”