The first thing Kevin Atkinson does to prepare for another football season is to break out the swim trunks and get some sand between his toes.

"I go to the beach and get away," said Atkinson, who is about to begin his third season as head coach at Denton (Texas) High School. "I start thinking about where we've been, what we've done and where we need to go."

And while the annual sojourn with his family to Orange Beach, Alabama, is the perfect way for Atkinson to get in the right state of mind, coaches all across the United States have their own methods to prepare for the madness of another grueling football season.

Whether that means a family vacation or catching up on sleep while they can, it's all about what works best for the individual coach.

For most coaches, their preseason rituals are a combination of things they learned from other head coaches during their tenures as assistants. They also don’t typically change that much throughout the years. Above all, organization is the key to preparing for a season.

"There's so much planning that goes into it," Atkinson said. "Sometimes it's overwhelming. I don't think the general public really has any idea. You have to think through everything. If you don’t think it through, it falls apart on you."

Atkinson spent 10 seasons as head coach at Keller High School, which, like Denton, is in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Another preseason tradition he brought with him to the Broncos is a coaching retreat shortly before the start of practice in August. The entire staff heads north to Falconhead Resort and Country Club near Marietta, Oklahoma.

"It's great bonding time where we talk about how we're going to serve our kids," Atkinson said. "Kids don't care about how much you know until they know how much you care. That retreat is a breath of fresh air to revisit our vision, our core values and what we stand for. When you build the cohesiveness of your staff, it filters out to your team."

Just as important as sharing the message with his coaches is making sure they are all on the same page.

"I really try to create a morale that starts with our staff," Atkinson said. "I get them to buy into what we're doing so they sell that to everyone else. The theme for us this year is 'Brick by Brick.' I felt like for any long-lasting structure, you need a solid foundation."

Once it's time for the players to start arriving, Atkinson also has a method that doesn't involve hanging out on the beach to get them mentally prepared for the season. The first half hour of each practice is devoted to a "boot camp" like the one the team holds in spring practice.

"It really locks kids into the discipline and focus they need," Atkinson said. "It gets them back in the groove. We do that about the first 30 minutes of practice every day."

Now that he has had a chance to implement his way of doing things at Denton, the process gets easier and easier each season. But that doesn't change the speed in which that first game seems to arrive.

"I feel like we have a recipe," Atkinson said. "I follow that recipe that I was taught by a lot of coaches I worked for."