|
Post by vanden48 on Jan 25, 2016 15:08:04 GMT -6
I am running into a major fight this year at my new school with this. When I coached in California, it is the law that every school get every helmet reconditioned every year. As far as I know that is the only state that has it as a law. This was the only part of football that was paid for by the district. Everything else we had to fundraise for. When I coached in AZ it was not a law but every school reconditioned every helmet every year, and the districts paid for it.
Now I am coaching in North Dakota and the culture in this state is to have 25% of your helmet stock reconditioned every year. This means helmets get reconditioned about once every 4 years. So some players actually play in the same helmet from their freshmen to their senior year, with out having it reconditioned. I thought this was horrible and wanted to have all of our helmets reconditioned, the administration thinks I am insane. I am going to compromise with them and recondition half of my stock this year and the other half next year. They want any less than that and I won't coach. With the amount of negative attention that has been in the news about concussions, you would think all schools would not have a problem with this bill.
But to answer the question about cleaning them. Dip them in a tub of water and disinfectant (Bleach) to clean the inside. And I use Goo be Gone and a buffing pad on my drill to polish the outsides.
|
|
|
Post by vanden48 on Jan 22, 2016 11:20:30 GMT -6
Unpopular opinion but I think it's pretty silly every time I hear somebody talking about "changing the culture" of a football program somewhere. This seems to me to be the new way that coaches can try to get attention on twitter more than anything else. If you really want to "change the culture" of a place you could kick everybody out of the community and only let people back in who buy a house over a million dollars, or the flip-side you could just build up government housing projects...you would definitely see the culture change then. As far as changing the attitude of people and making football cool and getting people excited about it? Winning does that, and good players do the winning. How many of you if you are being incredibly honest can look at one season where you were part of a program that turned around from bad to good, and honestly say that you were really just a player or two away from sucking? In my "turnaround" season we had a linebacker that we moved to running back his senior year, he went for like 2500 yards and we made the playoffs....we didn't know he was that good of a runningback...boy we really changed the culture. I guess my point is that everybody has motivational quotes, everybody has themes, everybody has acronyms and stand for some inspiring stuff, there's nothing wrong with that stuff...but it doesn't win anything, not really. It just irks me when I see coaches trying to take credit for a team's success because they had the right "message" I'm sure Urban Meyer is a good dude and a great coach, but he can bring all of the ideas from that book to Prairie View A&M university and they are still going to get smashed by 35 every week. I have to disagree with this. Urban Meyer will win wherever he goes. That is the type of coach he is. He will make programs great because that is his expectation of himself. Urban Meyer aside, I think you have to ask the question what is the "Culture" and how do they want it changed? I just took over a small town football program that had gone through a period of poor coaching and lacked recent success. The previous 7 years saw no winning record and declining program participation numbers. When I interviewed for the job the Superintendent, Principal, and AD all said they needed a change to help change the school "Culture". What they meant by this is they wanted stronger community involvement with the football program. They wanted high participation numbers. And they wanted larger crowds at the home football games. This is a basketball school in a small town. They had 22 members of the basketball program in grades 9-12 last year and only 20 members of the football program in grades 9-12 before this last year. To change this culture I had to attack these problems 1st. I also am living 50 miles away from the school, and was not receiving a paycheck. Thankfully my wife makes twice as much as I do. Advice to high school football coaches, marry a dentist. What the program was lacking that was causing a bad "culture" was effort and organization. Nobody wants to be part of something where the leader displays little effort and there is no structure. The previous leadership's involvement with the program ended in November when the season was done, actually in October as they never made the play-offs, and started back up again in August when the next season was starting. No weight training schedule, no team meetings, no summer program, ...nothing. So the 1st thing I did was announce that there would be weight training after school in May when I was hired. They had never had weight training, and the school had very little equipment, so I called tractor supply and got two truck loads of very large Tractor tires donated. I had the school purchase a bunch of sledge hammers, and we went to work. I also decided that I wanted to be visible, this is a small town and every one drives by the school at some point in the day, so we had all of our workouts outside. And to help make this fun I set up a 2000 watt PA to blast music. 1st week had 5 players, which in a couple of days turned to 10, and by the end of school we had on average 30 players showing up every day. We put up motivational quotes and decorated the locker room up with positive things that focused on winning and doing the right thing. We got signed up for a few summer 7 on 7 leagues and tournaments. To get the linemen involved I brought all of them and had all of the practice snapping. Gave the players and the parents a calendar, basic and simple I know but something they never had before. Season started and we had two practices a day. This was like committing murder in a farming town, but it also made the parents understand the commitment level that was required. We held a couple of fundraisers that helped purchase some new equipment and some new homecoming uniforms with the players names on them. This got more kids to come out. We had a roster size of 32 now, up from the previous year of 20. That is a 60% increase in participation for the math teachers. Then I tried something that they had never done here before, team dinners before the games. I told the parents they were going to cook and serve the food, and the players and coaches were going to eat it. We did it at the school, showed a highlight film, and I brought in a different guest speaker each week, who happened to be different commanders from the near by Air Force Base. Parents would no fight to be the ones who got to prepare the meals and be there for these events. We handed out weekly awards for achievement in the games, rocks that were painted in the opponent's team colors with the score and date of the game on it. We painted the field with hash marks, numbers, endzone and midfield decorations. This had never been done before, ever, at the school. It became a community event with parents and students helping out. We brought out the PA on game days to have pre-game music, for the 1st time ever at this school. We won twice as many games as they did in the previous staff's best year and made the playoffs for the first time in 7 years. Large crowds at the home games. Now the culture is changed. What was the secret? Everything that we did this year almost all successful coaches have done in some form or another at a program. To change a culture you need to put in the time and work and be organized. People need to see the fruits of your labor. You need to find ways for the parents to get involved, don't expect them to know how to do this. All parents want to be involved in their kid's lives, but very few understand how the can help out a football program because most don't understand football outside of what they see on TV. Organize them and tell them what to do. Most "Cultures" need to be changed because of a previous coach who did not put in the time, work, or organization to cultivate the growth of a "winning Culture". Athletes will come and go, along with wins and losses. If you have developed a good "Culture" your program will overcome these temporary setbacks and it won't change one thing.
|
|
|
Post by vanden48 on Jan 21, 2016 13:20:49 GMT -6
NDSU has a great strength and conditioning program. They do an exceptional job of developing their players. And when you walk into their facilities they are better than some group of 5 BSC schools.
|
|