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Post by Coach Vice on Mar 8, 2018 18:58:48 GMT -6
I think you're just about spot-on..... I have a follow up, though. As an AD, what would you do with coaches who under-achieve? I'm talking about the coach who does bare minimum (and sometimes less) over a period of time. We recently had an AD change and I've told both that we need to start scrutinizing effort and commitment among our coaches. Unfortunately, no one is listening. I've tried collaborating with them, I've tried offering assistance, and I've tried tolerating, but it's gone nowhere. In fact...last year, not only did they tell the AD that they wanted the weight room, but they requested the sports room, both gyms, and they even told the AD that they needed all the halls. Basically, it was an attempt to keep us from doing anything in the building after school. I hung around after school and after a few days noted they were only using a small portion of what they were reserving. I told our AD and the track coach's response was "you can have your guys stay after and if we're not using it, you can use it." I don't work that way. Honestly, being an AD comes with nepotism and politics. My recommendation holds little weight when it comes to hiring/firing of coaches as I report my recommendation to the administration, we talk about it and then they make their recommendation to the school board. Some administrators go with my recommendation, some don't. But, the school board can still vote against the administration's recommendation, which happens. I desperately wanted to can a volleyball coach one year as she was not only inept, she was unprofessional and many of her actions were liability issues. Our girls hadn't won a game in two years, they were embarrassing to watch and she I told her I wasn't recommending her for rehire, explained everything that had happened with her and he agreed with me. He recommended that she not be rehired but she was a former "sports star" of the school, popular in the community and the board voted against the recommendations, 5-0. But, I do a few things to keep our coaches on their toes. I ask that all of the coaches send me a schedule of off-season activities that they plan on implementing and a schedule for said events that they can provide the kids and parents with. This is documented on their evaluations. Their evaluations are almost painfully detailed and specific to the sport they're coaching. I just had our boys basketball coach in my room this morning for an evaluation and he got dinged on the "Fundamentals" section because the boys didn't follow their shots in and couldn't rebound for chit. He also got nailed on the "Knowledge Of The Game" portion as he went through a dozen different offenses and eight different presses by the end of the season. I'm going to recommend him for rehire as he's good with the kids, puts in the work in the off-season and is professional; he just needs to to stop being an Xs and Os guy. This is fantastic perspective. I will tell you this, though......and it's a poor commentary on my district. I've been begging for an evaluation for 2 years. I WANT my admin to see what I'm doing especially as a contrast to what everyone else is doing. I'd put what I'm doing up against the Yahoo's here any day...it's almost embarrassing. Don't get me wrong, I want them to be successful and I'd go to great lengths to see it, but there's no effort to do so.
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Post by coachphillip on Mar 8, 2018 22:14:42 GMT -6
Coaches from other sports crack me up with how they treat the weight room.
Basketball - It’ll mess up their shot. Baseball - They’ll get too bulky. Wrestling - They’ll put on too much weight.
If I showed you pictures of professional and college level baseball players, basketball players, and wrestlers ... They’re JACKED.
Even the soccer guys look all confused when I tell them to actually look at those soccer players’ legs.
How are you going to get bulky? My starting RB lifts everyday and is 185 pounds. How are you going to get bigger than him? People who say that baffle me.
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Post by utchuckd on Mar 9, 2018 6:46:32 GMT -6
Part of the problem is that we DO have a weight lifting class, but it's taught by....yep....the track coach. I literally laughed out loud when I read this. Good luck, Coach.
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Post by throwahitch on Mar 9, 2018 7:32:49 GMT -6
So here's my issue....stay with me as long as possible. I start structured weight room every year on the first week of December and it runs throughout the school year and summer, as most programs do. I invite ALL (girls and boys) athletic programs to lift with us and offer to tailor their workouts to what ever the coach might want, specifically the in-season teams so that it might take some burden off of the head coach in concerning him/her self with training. I do this for 2 reasons: 1. I think that EVERY kid in our athletics program should be in the weight room and lifting properly with a structured program suited to their needs. 2. I want to take some burden off of our head coaches who are in-season or pre-season, as it's not that hard for me to work with their athletes when I'm off-season. All of that being said, I only have a few programs that take me up on the offer (girls soccer, girls softball, and girls basketball). None of the other sports lift on their own regardless of the time of year. That brings me to the first question: Why the crap wouldn't you want someone to train your athletes with absolutely NO extra effort, responsibility, or time required of you? I'm asking this because many of those in-season kids are MY football players. I want them to train, but their coaches won't let them train in-season (even if it's only twice a week.) ISSUE NUMBER 2. The varsity track coaches (boys and girls.. they co-coach both teams). Don't spend ONE SECOND with their athletes outside of their scheduled season until about 3 weeks before their first meet. At that point they approach the AD and tell him they want the weight room for themselves after school (3:00) until 4:45. Despite the fact that I fill out a yearly calendar and reserve the WR for after school lifting (for all sports) in advance. The AD has caved to this for the past 3 years (including this year) and told us that we're out. Here's my problem... I've been training my athletes (many of which are THEIR athletes) since November and now they want to demand the weight room to themselves 3 weeks before their season? To be clear, they're not doing this because they don't understand or because they're simply unaware...they're D-bags. Believe me, I have a million examples of how I know this, but I won't kill you with them here. So my next question is: Am I missing something and just not getting it? I think I may have been a little hasty when discussing this with our AD last week in stating that we have awful coaches who don't put any time or consideration into our school's athletics. I continued by telling him that they are paycheck hounds who have no idea how to approach athletics of any kind and that we'll always have mediocre to bad athletics as long as we have guys like this on staff. I don't want to come off whiny, but I'm sick of busting my pickle to put together a great program for our boys only to have other coaches pee on it with their garbage effort and habits. What to do? Opinions? Tell me I'm wrong. Plus the amount of asshats out there who think that the weight room makes their players slow and unathletic. Seriously have family members who’s children play top notch state championships the whole nine. When I said they’d really fill out if we got them in the weight room their response was “yeah but we want him to be able to move”.
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Post by vanden48 on Mar 9, 2018 8:28:26 GMT -6
Our Track team wanted to organize the weight room with me. They said they will be using it Tuesday through Friday after school until 4:30. I said great, I will use it Monday after school and Wednesday and Friday form 6:00 am to 7:00 am. We will do morning lifts. I live a hour away from the school so I will be leaving the house at 4:30. Life will suck, but I'm hoping if the kids see my commitment, they will reciprocate that.
Work around the track coaches until their efforts are lost. I would also offer speed training to my football players that are running track, because if these clowns operate the way you say, track is probably hurting the players and you could get them faster on your own.
The other issue I would love to hear more about is the "Multi-Sport" athlete. I feel this only refers to football players playing other sports. I have never heard of a Basketball Coach telling his stud PF to go out for football in the fall. Or the baseball coach telling his pitcher to go out for QB. Its always the football coach not telling his players to lift weights and go out for winter and spring sports.
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Post by silkyice on Mar 9, 2018 9:22:08 GMT -6
Its always the football coach not telling his players to lift weights and go out for winter and spring sports. Did you mean the "not"?
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Post by gators41 on Mar 9, 2018 9:34:02 GMT -6
So here's my issue....stay with me as long as possible. I start structured weight room every year on the first week of December and it runs throughout the school year and summer, as most programs do. I invite ALL (girls and boys) athletic programs to lift with us and offer to tailor their workouts to what ever the coach might want, specifically the in-season teams so that it might take some burden off of the head coach in concerning him/her self with training. I do this for 2 reasons: 1. I think that EVERY kid in our athletics program should be in the weight room and lifting properly with a structured program suited to their needs. 2. I want to take some burden off of our head coaches who are in-season or pre-season, as it's not that hard for me to work with their athletes when I'm off-season. All of that being said, I only have a few programs that take me up on the offer (girls soccer, girls softball, and girls basketball). None of the other sports lift on their own regardless of the time of year. That brings me to the first question: Why the crap wouldn't you want someone to train your athletes with absolutely NO extra effort, responsibility, or time required of you? I'm asking this because many of those in-season kids are MY football players. I want them to train, but their coaches won't let them train in-season (even if it's only twice a week.) ISSUE NUMBER 2. The varsity track coaches (boys and girls.. they co-coach both teams). Don't spend ONE SECOND with their athletes outside of their scheduled season until about 3 weeks before their first meet. At that point they approach the AD and tell him they want the weight room for themselves after school (3:00) until 4:45. Despite the fact that I fill out a yearly calendar and reserve the WR for after school lifting (for all sports) in advance. The AD has caved to this for the past 3 years (including this year) and told us that we're out. Here's my problem... I've been training my athletes (many of which are THEIR athletes) since November and now they want to demand the weight room to themselves 3 weeks before their season? To be clear, they're not doing this because they don't understand or because they're simply unaware...they're D-bags. Believe me, I have a million examples of how I know this, but I won't kill you with them here. So my next question is: Am I missing something and just not getting it? I think I may have been a little hasty when discussing this with our AD last week in stating that we have awful coaches who don't put any time or consideration into our school's athletics. I continued by telling him that they are paycheck hounds who have no idea how to approach athletics of any kind and that we'll always have mediocre to bad athletics as long as we have guys like this on staff. I don't want to come off whiny, but I'm sick of busting my pickle to put together a great program for our boys only to have other coaches pee on it with their garbage effort and habits. What to do? Opinions? Tell me I'm wrong. Total crap coach. I wouldnt stand for it. No way track kicks you out. If you were excluding them it would be one thing. The fact you offer to train their kids is another. No way that should happen. As for your guys that play other sports, that is bs. Solution: Get an inschool weightlifting period. It is a must. You have to have this. Buy the guidance counselors biscuits every morning. Do whatever you have to do
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Post by gators41 on Mar 9, 2018 9:42:00 GMT -6
About the only way to avoid this nonsense is to offer it as a class during the school day-which we are fortunate enough to have. Part of the problem is that we DO have a weight lifting class, but it's taught by....yep....the track coach. Here's a short side-story on how awful they are.... as I said, they co-coach the boys and girls track teams. They will rotate going to practice. Every day, one of them will go home and the other will stay with both teams. So, they're both getting full paychecks, but only doing half the work. Ultimately, the kids suffer. For the first year I didn't say anything because I didn't want to be THAT guy. After I saw how it was affecting our athletics, I finally called them out. HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA. That is awesome. I am looking into doing that now with our JV Staff. They will coach Tuesdays and Thursdays. We will coach Monday Wed Friday.... What a joke.
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Post by WingTheT on Mar 9, 2018 9:45:44 GMT -6
AD didn't want to choose sides. The baseball coach basically made out multi-sport athletes to choose This is a hill worth dying on if an AD. Yes I totally agree! The AD took the cop out move. Made me lose faith in him especially because he knew we were right but didn't want to do the right thing. Because we ALL KNOW that weight training KILLS your arm strength and accuracy! It's FACT...that's why MLB, NFL QBs, others NEVER lift weights or participate in fitness programs.... PS: Yes I'm still salty about the idiot baseball coach as you can tell.
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Post by Defcord on Mar 9, 2018 9:54:51 GMT -6
I am not sure about basketball, but in baseball there are two types of travel coaches.
First--even though they are in it for a profit they are really good coaches. They know the game and know how to coach the game. They are pretty good coaches because they are for profit and if they sucked no one would come back.
Second--since their kids aren't good enough to make a legitimate travel or high school team they start their own and coach it so that they can protect their sons opportunities.
I don't agree with travel coaches that encourage players to specialize, but I have friends that coach travel baseball that are really good coaches and think it should be pointed out that not all of them are the devil.
Funny travel baseball philosophy: When I coached travel a couple years when I first got out of college we strictly kept 15 kids so that we didn't have playing time issues. The guy that ran the organization told all of the age group head coaches there were two stages of tryouts. The first stage was finding the 12 best players. The second step was finding the three Hottest Mom's from all the remaining kids trying out. I always thought it was funny and a joke, but later found out some of the HCs adhered to it for the long weekend road trips.
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Post by hammer66 on Mar 9, 2018 10:22:24 GMT -6
Its always TRACK, BASEBALL, and Basketball. I don't get it. I do know that Track heavily recruits our players to throw because of the lifting we do. We finally had the throwing coach ask us to provide him with our lifting program so he can have his (our) guys lift. A big part of that is our HC. He is trying to build bridges with all coaches in the building. If they are not on board no big deal.
Our weight room is dominated by the football team from 3 - 430 daily. YOU don't ever see a non football player in our weight room. If we are no it there during the season its a ghost town.
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Post by CS on Mar 9, 2018 19:21:58 GMT -6
I think you're just about spot-on..... I have a follow up, though. As an AD, what would you do with coaches who under-achieve? I'm talking about the coach who does bare minimum (and sometimes less) over a period of time. We recently had an AD change and I've told both that we need to start scrutinizing effort and commitment among our coaches. Unfortunately, no one is listening. I've tried collaborating with them, I've tried offering assistance, and I've tried tolerating, but it's gone nowhere. In fact...last year, not only did they tell the AD that they wanted the weight room, but they requested the sports room, both gyms, and they even told the AD that they needed all the halls. Basically, it was an attempt to keep us from doing anything in the building after school. I hung around after school and after a few days noted they were only using a small portion of what they were reserving. I told our AD and the track coach's response was "you can have your guys stay after and if we're not using it, you can use it." I don't work that way. Honestly, being an AD comes with nepotism and politics. My recommendation holds little weight when it comes to hiring/firing of coaches as I report my recommendation to the administration, we talk about it and then they make their recommendation to the school board. Some administrators go with my recommendation, some don't. But, the school board can still vote against the administration's recommendation, which happens. I desperately wanted to can a volleyball coach one year as she was not only inept, she was unprofessional and many of her actions were liability issues. Our girls hadn't won a game in two years, they were embarrassing to watch and she I told her I wasn't recommending her for rehire, explained everything that had happened with her and he agreed with me. He recommended that she not be rehired but she was a former "sports star" of the school, popular in the community and the board voted against the recommendations, 5-0. But, I do a few things to keep our coaches on their toes. I ask that all of the coaches send me a schedule of off-season activities that they plan on implementing and a schedule for said events that they can provide the kids and parents with. This is documented on their evaluations. Their evaluations are almost painfully detailed and specific to the sport they're coaching. I just had our boys basketball coach in my room this morning for an evaluation and he got dinged on the "Fundamentals" section because the boys didn't follow their shots in and couldn't rebound for chit. He also got nailed on the "Knowledge Of The Game" portion as he went through a dozen different offenses and eight different presses by the end of the season. I'm going to recommend him for rehire as he's good with the kids, puts in the work in the off-season and is professional; he just needs to to stop being an Xs and Os guy. Did you go to all of his practices?
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Post by coachcb on Mar 10, 2018 9:46:39 GMT -6
Honestly, being an AD comes with nepotism and politics. My recommendation holds little weight when it comes to hiring/firing of coaches as I report my recommendation to the administration, we talk about it and then they make their recommendation to the school board. Some administrators go with my recommendation, some don't. But, the school board can still vote against the administration's recommendation, which happens. I desperately wanted to can a volleyball coach one year as she was not only inept, she was unprofessional and many of her actions were liability issues. Our girls hadn't won a game in two years, they were embarrassing to watch and she I told her I wasn't recommending her for rehire, explained everything that had happened with her and he agreed with me. He recommended that she not be rehired but she was a former "sports star" of the school, popular in the community and the board voted against the recommendations, 5-0. But, I do a few things to keep our coaches on their toes. I ask that all of the coaches send me a schedule of off-season activities that they plan on implementing and a schedule for said events that they can provide the kids and parents with. This is documented on their evaluations. Their evaluations are almost painfully detailed and specific to the sport they're coaching. I just had our boys basketball coach in my room this morning for an evaluation and he got dinged on the "Fundamentals" section because the boys didn't follow their shots in and couldn't rebound for chit. He also got nailed on the "Knowledge Of The Game" portion as he went through a dozen different offenses and eight different presses by the end of the season. I'm going to recommend him for rehire as he's good with the kids, puts in the work in the off-season and is professional; he just needs to to stop being an Xs and Os guy. Did you go to all of his practices? I pop in on all of our coaches once or twice per week. I do so because I have had a few coaches over the years that I've caught violating state and school policies when it comes to practice. They'd have former alumni come in and play with the kids, have middle school kids practicing with the team or would be participating with the kids in scrimmages. These are huge liability issues for the school and I needed to put a stop to it. But, I digress. When I went to those practices, I saw the kids putting up shots and not following them in and not even attempting to box out under the basket and the coaches never addressed it. I also saw the coaching staff installing a new offense, defense or press each week and not stressing fundamentals during practice. Now, I honestly don't like this kind of micro-management as an AD but I do so for a few reasons. Firstly, many of my coaches are pretty green and I'm trying to help them learn to stress fundamentals and keep the Xs and Os simple and sound. Our basketball teams have been getting crushed for a few years because the coaches we have tend to be "Xs and Os" gurus and we're just not fundamentally sound. Secondly, I get hammered by my administration and the community when they show up to volleyball or basketball games and see poor performances because the kids don't execute the simple fundamentals of the sport. I had folks demanding that this guy be fired after this season but he's a decent coach, he's good with the kids but he's just green. A little push in the right direction could make him an excellent coach. So, when school board members and the administration and talking about canning the guy, I can tell them that I have addressed their concerns with the coach and he understands. I will say, I do limit my management of this aspect to those simple points; fundamentals and sticking with a scheme and executing it. I don't sit down with them and get into specific schemes ("I don't understand why you're running ____ full court press, you should be running a half court trap!!") as I'm certainly not going to try and dictate what they do there. I sit down with our coaches (one-one) before and after the season to talk about these things. I had sat down with our boys basketball coach back in November and we talked shop about basketball. I don't address things during the season as we all have enough on our plates and it never works out well. I wasn't AD last year but saw the same fundamental problems in the previous season. So, following shots in and rebounding properly were two things that we talked about, I didn't see it being addressed at practice, they weren't doing it in games, so he was dinged on his eval over it. I didn't gut him over it but he got a 3.5/5 on these two aspects of the evaluation because of it. Welcome to the world of being an AD. It's hard to strike a balance between just being a paper-pushing administrator and a hands-on administrator. You push too much paper, don't address certain things and you lose clout with the school board and the administration. They don't take your recommendations seriously and they don't listen to you. You micro-manage too much and you over-step boundaries with the coaches. My school board and administration would love it if I was on the coaches' a--es about every little thing, all season long, but I have made it clear that I don't operate that way.
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smd
Sophomore Member
Posts: 211
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Post by smd on Mar 11, 2018 15:36:54 GMT -6
it starts with the schools administrators. what is their vision for the athletic programs at the school? if they believe in the benefits of a school wide weight room and conditioning program for all sports, then the discussion should end there. this is how it is at _____ high school. if you don't want to be apart of this, well then nothing personal, but i appreciate your work here, but we do no see eye to eye on this, and i will not budge on our goals for the athletes here. so good luck in your next job search. id be glad you in any manner. at the end of the day, the schools athletes are getting stronger or not. coaches should be using the off season as player development. kids that play mulit sports, should still be involved in in-season lifting. if a coach isn't on board… coaches get fired everyday…
sounds like it won't get better at your place. coaches that don't believe in the weight room never will be on board. they are lazy. can't change that. focus on your kids and make your program as good as it can be. parents should be thankful that you are there and fighting a good fight for their children.
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Post by silkyice on Mar 11, 2018 22:18:06 GMT -6
To add to my previous post and I don’t think the OP is doing this. I am just making a point that I have made before elsewhere.
Make sure you are doing workouts and not wearouts. The athletes in other sports in season should not be worn out or overly tired or sore.
You can lift and still get stronger in season, it doesn’t take much. But too much can be detrimental to them and wear them out. You want them at peak performance, especially around playoff time.
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Post by coachcb on Mar 12, 2018 9:18:46 GMT -6
it starts with the schools administrators. what is their vision for the athletic programs at the school? if they believe in the benefits of a school wide weight room and conditioning program for all sports, then the discussion should end there. this is how it is at _____ high school. if you don't want to be apart of this, well then nothing personal, but i appreciate your work here, but we do no see eye to eye on this, and i will not budge on our goals for the athletes here. so good luck in your next job search. id be glad you in any manner. at the end of the day, the schools athletes are getting stronger or not. coaches should be using the off season as player development. kids that play mulit sports, should still be involved in in-season lifting. if a coach isn't on board… coaches get fired everyday… sounds like it won't get better at your place. coaches that don't believe in the weight room never will be on board. they are lazy. can't change that. focus on your kids and make your program as good as it can be. parents should be thankful that you are there and fighting a good fight for their children. I agree with you 100% on this post. However, bear in mind that it is becoming more and more difficult to find people that can actually coach a sport well. I have been trying to get everyone on our staff to buy into an all-sports weight training but it's tough. Most of our coaches have bought into it, see the benefits and hammer their kids about getting into the weight room. BUT, there are always a few dissenters that make it difficult. As I've pointed out before, we had a quality girls basketball HC who ran an excellent program. But, he refused to let the girls weight train during the season and he never pushed the girls to do so in the off-season as he didn't "believe" in it. He demanded that they be involved in as many sports as possible, ran open gyms that didn't conflict with other practices, took the girls to camps, etc..etc.. He retired, we brought on a new coach and the girls basketball program is struggling because he's an Xs and Os guy and we're not a fundamentally sound basketball team. He is a PITA about weight training during the season (wants to do his own thing..) but is all over the girls about lifting with me when the season is over. So, moral of the story: we have a new coach who believes in the benefits of weight training but he's not effective when it comes to coaching his sport. And, unfortunately, he is the best that we can get right now. He was the only applicant that we even considered for an interview because the rest of the pool was so chitty.
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