Paris football is undergoing a big program change in its transition to 8-man.

The Coyotes will have an experienced voice leading them in its inaugural season as Cody Carney was hired last week as the head coach, as was announced at a school board meeting. Carney brings 16 years of coaching experience, including six years with the 8-man game at Osceola, when the Indians went 16-43 during that span.

Those prior six years were spent at Carney’s alma mater Osceola, starting as the defensive coordinator and then serving as the head coach for five years. He believes he can help Paris take this new step.

“I’ve been having some feelings of looking to move on. My wife is actually from Moberly. It was a big decision. After lots of prayer and talking it over with the family, it just felt right at this point in our lives to make that move,” Carney said. “With them making the transition to 8-man, I think I can be helpful with the kids and the community in doing that.”

Carney said he was in Paris in 2007 when he was coaching with Milan, which he did for five years, and has some familiarity with the surrounding area because of his wife. He said he was also attending school at Truman State University in Kirksville during that time as his first coaching position was offered while he was in college.

As a Truman State Bulldog, Carney played running back after switching between running back and linebacker with Osceola. He said Paris athletic director Gary Crusha was his head coach in high school at one point.

“I was in one of the football coach’s classes and he made an announcement, ‘Hey, Milan is looking for anybody who’s interested in helping. They need another assistant coach because they only have one,’” Carney said. “I just put in my application, rearranged my schedule so I could be at practice every day, and that’s how I got started.”

Crusha said Carney was definitely the best candidate available after Joseph Utterback stepped down after one season as head coach. Utterback is still a teacher with the district and is still welcome to be part of the football program if he wants in the future.

Utterback said in a letter published on Facebook, “I was unbelievably excited to head into this second year being able to evaluate and adjust. However, there are so many things on my to-do list that I know will never get crossed off while I’m coaching and I’m excited to make deposits into other areas of life. I’m also excited to spend a little more time with family and friends and do things I don’t normally get to do. Over the last six years, I have put everything I have into Coyote football and I would continue to do that if it were an option.”

Carney’s experience coaching the 8-man game was definitely what attracted Paris to him, Crusha said, but his character also played a role.

“Whether it is 8-man or 11-man, Cody is a good football coach with a good football mind,” Crusha said. “He is good for young men. He is a good role model on and off the field. He’s what we were looking for in a head football coach.”

Crusha said he thinks the kids will be excited already with the change to 8-man as Paris now enters a competition field with small schools like them, hence out of pools with bigger programs that partially led to six of its previous seven seasons ending with losing records. With Carney heading the effort, Crusha said he thinks the Coyotes can gain even more confidence when they hopefully compete for district championships and beyond in the future.

“The first goal is to be able to compete in general,” Crusha said. “8-man is still football, but the kids are going to have to get used to that style of play. It is a little more high-scoring. Defense is hard to play in 8-man football.”

In the 8-man game, the field dimensions are narrower, but Carney said there tends to be a lot more one-on-one situations in the open field on defense given the smaller number of personnel on the field at any given time.

Osceola made the transition to 8-man football six years ago before the former defensive coordinator Carney became the head coach in the program’s second year after the change.

“I always preach to the guys, ‘Hey, some of us are going to be free and open to try to make that tackle, but everybody’s got their own one-on-one battle they got to try to win,’” Carney said. “You don’t get a lot of double teams and things like that going on in 8-man. It’s you have to beat your guy and try to get to the ball.”

Carney said offensive playcalling is more limited just because of the limited amount of formations available with the given number of players — a fact he started to learn when Osceola adopted the game. During that time, Carney said his friends who were 8-man coaches were helpful while trying to understand because while he said he had watched it before, it is different when putting it into practice yourself.

Something that Carney still needs to adjust to as he makes the move to Paris with his wife and four kids is figuring out the Coyotes’ strengths for the new playstyle. He said he met his new team and assistant coaches on Tuesday this week. In the future, Carney wants to consult the coaches and watch film to pin down his kids’ strengths.

“I put character, commitment, and hard work above just about anything,” Carney said. “If you take care of those things, the things on the field will take care of themselves. Hopefully I get up there this summer and start figuring out what they’re capable of physically and then hopefully learning about all the intangibles each kid brings to the table — those things you can’t measure like heart, hustle and all those.”