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Post by coachcb on Aug 1, 2015 12:26:42 GMT -6
I would like to read about some of the experiences other coaches have had with athletic co-op situations around the country. In my former school, we were co-oped for all sports and it was an unpleasant experience, to say the least. I was the AD at my school and I began the push for the co-op, it was a bad situation and some insight into other co-ops would be helpful. It would be interesting to read about other co-ops and how they've worked for those involved.
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Post by freezeoption on Aug 1, 2015 12:47:01 GMT -6
I saw this post after you posted on mine. If you can go without a coop, I would not coop. We coop with those three schools because if we didn't we wouldn't have a team. Some of our classes only have one or two boys and sometimes those boys don't do squat. It is a pain. One school has no weights, the other has weights but I don't know how hard they are working because I am not there. One of the schools FFA tries to make his guys miss practice for things. I have tried to work with it, try to stay patient, but it has not been fun. The small school only sends us 3 kids, 2 hs and one ms. I would like to drop them and try to get another school to coop with us but that will probably not happen because they coop with us in basketball. Again, they only give us one kid in bball, so it's not like we can't live without them.
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Post by mariner42 on Aug 1, 2015 12:49:32 GMT -6
I actually am pretty curious about this because there's nothing like it in this part of CA and I'd venture most parts of CA are the same. I'd love to hear some answers to any of the following:
1-What lead to the co-op in your situation? What were the expected results vs actual results? 1b-What would you do differently if you could?
2-Fundraising. Is it as much of a PITA as I imagine it is to get multiple communities to support such a program?
3-How did the hiring of coaches happen? Pretty political?
4-Did the different school cultures affect your team?
5-Were your players friends outside of football at all?
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Post by fantom on Aug 1, 2015 13:13:23 GMT -6
I actually am pretty curious about this because there's nothing like it in this part of CA and I'd venture most parts of CA are the same. I'd love to hear some answers to any of the following: 1-What lead to the co-op in your situation? What were the expected results vs actual results? 1b-What would you do differently if you could? 2-Fundraising. Is it as much of a PITA as I imagine it is to get multiple communities to support such a program? 3-How did the hiring of coaches happen? Pretty political? 4-Did the different school cultures affect your team? 5-Were your players friends outside of football at all? I have an even more basic question: What do you call the team? Is it named after one of the schools? For example, even though they go to Springfield HS they play football for Shelbyville HS?
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Post by coachg125 on Aug 1, 2015 13:47:06 GMT -6
I have no experience with it but to answer the above question, I have seen teams put both school names as team name. So Joe Smith would attend Shelbyville and play for the Shelbyville/Springfield team. Not sure how they deicide on mascot names.
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Post by coachcb on Aug 1, 2015 15:51:36 GMT -6
I actually am pretty curious about this because there's nothing like it in this part of CA and I'd venture most parts of CA are the same. I'd love to hear some answers to any of the following: 1-What lead to the co-op in your situation? What were the expected results vs actual results? 1b-What would you do differently if you could? 2-Fundraising. Is it as much of a PITA as I imagine it is to get multiple communities to support such a program? 3-How did the hiring of coaches happen? Pretty political? 4-Did the different school cultures affect your team? 5-Were your players friends outside of football at all? 1. a) Low numbers drive you to co-op and it generally starts with football. The schools pool their resources so that you can keep sports alive. The powers that be in the state won't approve a co-op unless you can show that you need it to field a team. 1. b) What would I do differently? Not get into the co-op in the first place. I would have pushed other avenues with our school board because the ship honestly started sinking the co-op contract was inked. 2. Fundraising was a HUGE problem because each school had their own booster clubs and they couldn't get their stuff together. The schools split the financial costs of the co-op but I kept my distance from the booster clubs. There was fighting over scheduling because the booster clubs just decided to do their own thing in their perspective gyms. When we had home games, our booster club ran the show, when the home games were at their place, they ran it... I dealt with a lot of bickering over home games. "That's all I have to say about that..." 3. Hiring of coaches was difficult as it was indeed very political. We were the smaller school in the co-op so we basically went with their HCs for the high school. BUT, we pushed hard to have our people as middle school HCs. I had no intention of even coaching because the previous HC told me that he didn't need me on the staff when I offered to help out. But, he left and they begged me to coach. It was almost laughable: "Well, I won't recommend _____ for their position if you won't recommend _____". 4. School cultures weren't a big deal. The kids got along well for the most part and the schools meshed well. The few fundraisers we ran together went off without incident and were fun. The communities couldn't have been more different though. The other community was not on board with the co-op in the first place which was ridiculous because they would've forfeited several basketball and volleyball games by the end of the season if we weren't co-oping. Numbers were low to begin with and injuries didn't help matters. 5. Our kids weren't friends outside of football. They played well together but ran in completely different social groups and didn't have much to do with each other off of the field. But, as I stated earlier, the kids were never the problem; it was the adults. To answer fantom, you generally go with a new mascot and new colors. So, the Shelby-Springfield Bandits or something along those lines. The new mascot and colors are always a touchy subject with the schools and that is where most co-ops have a the most fighting. Oh yeah, people wanted to fight over which name would come first in the co-op; our town or theirs.
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Post by freezeoption on Aug 2, 2015 10:38:21 GMT -6
1. In order to have football we had to coop. We have classes where we only have one or two boys and sometimes they don't play anything. As stated earlier, our first year was just jr high. We did great, but we scheduled weak opponents. The super was the head coach, but left after that year, I knew that would be a problem when they moved me to head. The kids thought it would be easy to win and didn't do much in the weight room. Had 30 out the next year in hs and 20 in jr. high. About half of the hs kids left after the 3rd game. I figured I would lose several, but I loss some that played the year before and I didn't think those guys would leave. The practices the year before were not that tough. I wish we didn't have to coop, but we do in order to play. 2. Our school pays for pretty much everything. The second largest school gave us a one man sled, which is great. The third school it is hard to get anything from. It is a school of 40 kids k-12, they don't have a lot of extra finances. We use their van to carry gear to away games. 3. They each send us a guy to coach, but we pay their stipend. 4. School culture is pretty good between the schools. Communication could be better between the schools, I put info out there several ways, communicate with administrators but it could be better. Funny thing is the communication from my school to me is not very good. 5. Our kids get along great, I don't think they hangout together since we are a rural community. We go with our school name, mascot and colors. We pay for everything so that is it.
I will add we use to coop with another school down the road about 20 miles. They played 11 man. We would give them about 5 in high school and 5 in jr high every year. Communication wasn't great. We gave them a lot of players for their bantam teams. We got the interest in football going those 3 years then started our own program.
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Post by coachcb on Aug 3, 2015 15:36:25 GMT -6
1. In order to have football we had to coop. We have classes where we only have one or two boys and sometimes they don't play anything. As stated earlier, our first year was just jr high. We did great, but we scheduled weak opponents. The super was the head coach, but left after that year, I knew that would be a problem when they moved me to head. The kids thought it would be easy to win and didn't do much in the weight room. Had 30 out the next year in hs and 20 in jr. high. About half of the hs kids left after the 3rd game. I figured I would lose several, but I loss some that played the year before and I didn't think those guys would leave. The practices the year before were not that tough. I wish we didn't have to coop, but we do in order to play. 2. Our school pays for pretty much everything. The second largest school gave us a one man sled, which is great. The third school it is hard to get anything from. It is a school of 40 kids k-12, they don't have a lot of extra finances. We use their van to carry gear to away games. 3. They each send us a guy to coach, but we pay their stipend. 4. School culture is pretty good between the schools. Communication could be better between the schools, I put info out there several ways, communicate with administrators but it could be better. Funny thing is the communication from my school to me is not very good. 5. Our kids get along great, I don't think they hangout together since we are a rural community. We go with our school name, mascot and colors. We pay for everything so that is it. I will add we use to coop with another school down the road about 20 miles. They played 11 man. We would give them about 5 in high school and 5 in jr high every year. Communication wasn't great. We gave them a lot of players for their bantam teams. We got the interest in football going those 3 years then started our own program. This was a the major reason why our co-op struggled. It was incredibly difficult to get things accomplished because of lack of communication. The other school's AD didn't like dealing with me as I was persistent when it came to dealing with things. They had grown used to issues getting pawned off on the powers-that-be or just disappearing in general. We had several girls complain that they were being bullied by the girls from the other school. One of the girls that was angry was a mean spirited kid who caused problems everywhere she went but I wasn't going to let that be an excuse to blow off the complaint. I had to send three emails and leave a voice message to the AD to get him to sit down and look at the situation.
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