The field house office of Riverside High School football coach Zach Davis is ordinary - almost.
There is a dry-erase board, computer, flat-screen television used to watch game film, weights and footballs. There is also a Graco portable crib for Davis' 11-month-old daughter Abigail, and it represents more than safe quarters for the little girl who is first on the depth chart of Davis' heart.
Football and family go hand in hand for the first-year head coach, and that philosophy mixed with long days and late nights is how he believes he can resurrect the once-promising program.
"We spend a lot of time here," Davis said, nodding at the crib. "We're trying to help these young men become better men."
And win games, eventually. For now, though, the 30-year-old Davis is more focused on the process for a program that has lost 23 consecutive games and is 3-36 since the beginning of the 2012 season. Riverside is 0-9 heading into tonight's regular-season finale against Spring Valley.
But there is reason for optimism for football fans in eastern Kanawha County. The culture at Riverside is changing. The Warriors' roster features an impressive 76 players, and it is heavy on underclassmen. They start 11 freshmen and sophomores, and a half-dozen more see playing time.
"It's hard to win games when that kid is 14 [years old] and the other kid is 18," Davis said, "but our fields to plow are with the younger kids."
In addition, the middle school program at feeder school DuPont just completed a 7-1 season, and the class of eighth-graders graduating to the Riverside program finished their three-year career with a 22-2 record.
"Losing hurts our community. Football has always been big in our community," Riverside principal Valery Harper said. "They want to see a winning team, they want to see a developed team, they want a team they can be proud of.
"Everyone wants to win. Every time I see these kids, they're getting better and they're holding their heads up high. I know they're going to get it with time."
So, too, does Davis. The son of former Major League pitcher Storm Davis, the Riverside coach uprooted his family from Georgia and moved here to rebuild the Riverside program. He adopted the slogan "Brick by brick," and has been patient and prudent as he builds a football program from the ground up.
"We're going to lay the foundation and go from there," Davis said. "Nothing is a quick fix in high school. I can't go sign a guy, I can't go recruit a guy. You develop what you have."
What he inherited was a group of student-athletes who needed to learn, well, just about everything to become a football player.
"It was like if you go to buy a house and it looks OK, and then you turn the water on and the pipes are busted - that's what happened," Davis said. "I walked in and saw we had some decent players and decent numbers, and then we started teaching them football and you're getting the brook trout look.
"This year has really been teaching them how to practice, how to lift weights, how to watch film. It's Football 101 out there. We're in football infancy with our guys."
Davis recalled the first weightlifting session with his team. He wanted to see how many could bench press 250 pounds. The answer: zero.
Davis, who played on the offensive line at East Carolina and Liberty, started to build football players. Lift by lift. Run by run. Brick by brick.
His objective is simple. He wants to develop below-average players into average players. He wants to elevate average players into good ones. He wants to push the good to become great.
"We want to move them up a level through practice, the weight room and the classroom," Davis said. "We're running kids for D's and F's. We're hard on them. I thought we'd only have 40 players by this time of the year, but they've stuck around."
The players see what Harper witnessed during her first encounter with Davis. He sat in front of Harper, then-athletic director Ryan Carter and former University of Charleston coach Tony DeMeo during his interview. Davis knew the plays Riverside had used on offense and defense the year before. He'd seen game film. He'd watched highlights on the football video website Hudl.
"I don't know everything about X's and O's," Harper said. "But it's like going into a classroom, it could be a physics classroom and I don't know physics, but I know a good teacher when I see one.
"That same philosophy applies to Coach Davis. I don't know everything about football, but I knew he was the man for Riverside."
This is the 17th season of Riverside football. In the first four seasons after the consolidation of DuPont and East Bank, the program compiled a 41-11 record. The next four seasons: 23-21. The next four seasons: 19-22. The four seasons that preceded Davis' arrival: 8-28.
The Warriors allowed more points in 2013 and '14, 939, than in the first four years of the program's existence. Riverside won more games in the first five seasons, 49, than in the last 12 combined (42).
This isn't going to be easy for Davis, so he isn't making it easy on anyone.
"When we're bigger, faster and stronger than people, we'll win," Davis said. "At every level of football, that's the way it works."
The players lift four days a week. They do heavy lifting and CrossFit. Burpees, pull-ups, kettle bell swings, box jumps and dead lifts. Ladder work, triple extension, power clean, hang clean, thruster and snatch.
"You have to be able to handle the cardiovascular endurance but still be able to push weight and do it explosively," Davis said. "You win in that room right there."
Davis pointed to the weight room when he finished that sentence. It's where his team will be Monday, the first day of the first week after the season ends. To Davis, that's the beginning of the preparation for the 2016 season.
He knows his players are on board. He sees them believing again.
"If you walk out to our practice you wouldn't know what our record is," Davis said. "We fly around, it's physical - really physical - and they have a good time. You'll hear them in the locker room singing and laughing.
"That's about leadership. If I'm down, if our coaches are down, they'll be down. If we're up, they're up. We hurt on Friday nights - losing hurts - but then we go home and it goes away and we get back here and go to work."
Building, brick by brick.