coachh
Junior Member
Posts: 336
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Post by coachh on Apr 21, 2009 9:05:20 GMT -6
Coaches,
I took over a program 2 Seasons ago. I came from a program that has been to state 6 times in the last 10 years. I am struggling with getting the players to buy into weightlifting, speed training etc. They did not do much before I got here. All the other sports do not support multi sports, so they will not play football. The other sports say to their players "you will get hurt"
I am really struggling with turning around a program, if I cannot get the players to buy into what it takes to be successful, how am I going to do it?
If I had to go with only the guys who are dedicated it would be only be 9 to be Seniors, 5 to be Juniors, and 4 to be Sophomores. So you see I cannot go with that method.
I am really struggling, I know we get into coaching for more then just winning, but I cannot handle another losing season.
HELP!!
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Post by superpower on Apr 21, 2009 9:14:44 GMT -6
Coaches, If I had to go with only the guys who are dedicated it would be only be 9 to be Seniors, 5 to be Juniors, and 4 to be Sophomores. So you see I cannot go with that method. HELP!! If you have 18 dedicated kids, you are in business. Build around them. Praise them. Focus on the 18 that care. Give them the best football experience you can. Believe it or not, if you have 18 dedicated young men, you are in better shape than lots of programs. |
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Post by shortpunter on Apr 21, 2009 9:25:30 GMT -6
Sounds like you have some that have bought in. You will always have a few that are turds but most will be on the fence. Build theteam around the ones who have bought in. Many followers will follow.
Stay possitive and keep focused on the goal which is to make fine young men.... winning games will come and go but a chance to impact the lives of the players will last forever.
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Post by fbdoc on Apr 21, 2009 9:31:08 GMT -6
Coach the heck out of those 18! Good things will happen with good kids and a good coach. The word will get out and others will come, maybe not this year, but they will if you persevere. Remember the words from Tony Dungy's new book - told to him by his college coach, "Success is Uncommon, and therefore not to be enjoyed by the common man." It sounds like you and your boys are due for some success this year! Hang in there coach!
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Post by fbcoach74 on Apr 21, 2009 9:32:03 GMT -6
I am in a similar situations. Work on the young kids, but that is a long term approach. Over the past three seasons we had 9 kids that committed to the with room then the second year it was around 15 now it is around 25. I Think it is because we praise the kids that do come and plus the other kids seem them having more success on the field. We also implemented an off season program where we put the kids in groups and awarded points for attendance, points for grades, points for weight room improvement. It became a competition and really helped. I you would like a copy I would be glad to e-mail it. It is nothing special just a combination of what Norther illinois and Northwestern does, just modified for us.
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Post by bulldogoption on Apr 21, 2009 10:10:05 GMT -6
Coach,
What is your coaching background? Are you the HC, were you the HC at your previous program?
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coachh
Junior Member
Posts: 336
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Post by coachh on Apr 21, 2009 11:52:22 GMT -6
Thanks guys, great stuff, sometimes it is hard to focus on the few, I know it has to start somewhere. I guess, to answer the previous question. Yes, I am the head coach, and no I was not the Head coach at the previous school.
When you are use to winning and the kids doing everything that you ask of them, it is hard when the hill seems so high to climb. But I will keep climbing.
it is nice to hear from others.
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Post by bulldogoption on Apr 21, 2009 14:23:07 GMT -6
Coach,
I was/am involved in a similar situation. Left a solid program as asst. to take over a losing program as HC. We all have to start somewhere it seems, eh?
What I have found is two-fold. Mistakes by me as there is a huge difference between asst and HC, AND what a difference culture makes in a community.
I'm heading into year five of HCing. I can look back and see many things I did wrong that would have changed how we played, possibly drastically. You are probably better prepared than I so that point may be moot.
A losing culture doesn't know how to prepare to win. I hate the expression "know how to win". Its all about preparation as you know.
In my experience, it has taken time and trust. I run an offseason competition trying to positively motivate our athletes. Its finally starting to work. This year, 5, we will have had the majority of our players lift all spring and summer with great gains. That should make a huge difference on the field. We still have a ways to go, but its worlds from where it was. Kids want winning to be as easy as sucking a$$ was. Somehow you have to motivate them to work when they have never seen how its done or seen how it pays off. Its a leap of faith on their part.
Keep at it!
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Post by jpdaley25 on Apr 21, 2009 14:55:33 GMT -6
The hardest thing for a football coach is to have patience. Sometimes though, that's what it takes. Believe in yourself and what you are doing and keep your nose to the grindstone no matter what. One day you will look up and realize that you are successful. Those 18 guys you have are very special - make them feel that way. Those are your boys. When they understand that there is nothing you wouldn't do for them, including staying in a losing situation, then there won't be anything they won't do for you. Good luck coach, and remember you aren't alone.
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Post by touchdowng on Apr 21, 2009 18:00:40 GMT -6
coachh
I stepped down from coaching after last season and am now an admin in the same school. I just walked out of our weight room about a half hour ago and there were 30-40 kids working really hard on a 75 degree day. This is only our second day of Sun since a month ago.
Our staff helped build a culture around work and what I heard as I was walking down the hall, away from the weight room, put a huge smile on my face. "Great job!" ......"I knew you could do it!" . . . . "That's much better than a month ago!" . . . . "You are going to crush people this fall!"....
I heard three coaches yelling out affirmations and encouragement to the boys who were there. We started this program four seasons ago and there were times during the first year when we only had 10 kids in the weight room. What we changed in year two was how we recognized kids for their efforts in the off season.
Do what others have told you, build around your core kids and find ways to recognize their positive behaviors and improvements.
IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME
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burn
Sophomore Member
Posts: 181
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Post by burn on Apr 21, 2009 20:40:26 GMT -6
tjg,
Has it right but what we say is open it (the wt. room) and they will come. I am also in my second year at a losing school. I asked a coach in our area what is the one thing he did to change the culture of his school and his reply was simple. I was there every day and when the kid knew I was in it for the long haul it started to turn around. Keep rolling and they'll start to respond lol.
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Post by craines10 on Apr 21, 2009 22:31:45 GMT -6
18 can turn to 30 in one season of competitive play. A majority of kids are followers and they like to "see what all the fuss is about" so to speak. With those 18 you may get 9 new faces that want to see what made them into believers. Stay firm in your focus and the change will come. I am apart of a staff that 5 years ago was giving up 59 points a game. This past season we made it to the Sectional Championship game for the first time since 2000. Every year we got better and the senior class that followed the previous one wanted to go further, and it all started with that initial 6 seinors we had 4 years ago who lost by 2 in the 1st round of the playoffs.
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Post by touchdownmaker on Apr 22, 2009 3:38:18 GMT -6
Most of the time the lack of buy in comes down to "why do all that work if we are going to get killed anyhow" and "why do all that hard work if someone else is going to start anyhow" and "why do all that hard work if I am going to start and play anyhow"
so, while you may have to start and play a few younger kids and sit a few older maybe more talented kids, it will send a message. the message will be louder and clearer if you win without the talented uninvested. (afterall, youre not winning with them, might as well lose without them).
again, I believe if you can win without them that you will really be in business.
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Post by dacoachmo on Apr 22, 2009 5:18:26 GMT -6
18 is a nice core of kids...get them into a leadership council to start the ball rolling and to brainstorm ideas to get other kids. Start doing other activities besides just the weightroom to get other kids involved.
REMAIN POSITIVE!
REWARD the kids that have been there ASAP!!!!
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coachh
Junior Member
Posts: 336
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Post by coachh on Apr 22, 2009 6:08:22 GMT -6
Guys, great advice. Can you go into the rewards / postive reinforcements that you do for the one's that are buying in?
Thanks - You guys are really motivating me!!
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Post by Coach Bennett on Apr 22, 2009 7:03:03 GMT -6
Coach,
One thing we're considering doing this year is having a schoolwide punt, pass and kick competition. Put an announcement on, tell kids that it's open to anyone and everyone, not just football players...who knows, even if you connect w/one kid, he could be a difference maker.
Is there an amusement park or water park or something of that nature that you could take your core kids to? Honor their commitment by bonding outside of football in addition to all the things you do that are football related.
Create a buzz, build the vibe.
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Post by chuge325 on Apr 22, 2009 8:54:42 GMT -6
Coach H-
We started a program at a Christian school (a whole other set of competitive issues) 3 years ago. The school had only had basketball, cross country and soccer - and soccer was king. In fact, it seemed the kids only played another sport w/ the ok of the coach. Most of them played club soccer in the fall, and conditioning for soccer started in January - you get the picture. This is a small school - about 85 boys now 6-12th grade -but thanks to football we seem to be growing. We had a couple of big advantages show up in the last year - including a football guy as the headmaster. Just background.
We faced many of these parent issues - in fact we almost didn't have the numbers two years ago to continue a HS team. We attacked this four ways -
1. get a committed set of coaches who will be there! In a small environment, the consistency of leadership was key to develop long term.
2. Start with the young ones. We focused on numbers and FUN in the middle school team.
3. Know we will lose for a while. Make sure that the program is about something bigger than winning and losing on Friday nights. Be sure that the parents and kids and coaches and administration all know that the first victory is inside the kids, and only after that will it manifest itself on the field. If you are successful at this, you will get the leeway to build.
4. Develop the parents. This only started to show success in the past year. We went into the spring of the 2008 season with a full JV team (24) but only 10 returning players on the HS team. (for us JV is middle school and varsity is HS). What struck me is the comment in your post "The other sports say to their players "you will get hurt" . This was a huge issue - especially in the soccer world. So I bombed the parents with facts in meetings and emails to all the parents in the school. Once I was challenged on my assertion that football is as safe as any sport - and safer than many daily activities, I sent out the email I will post below. This was April of 2008. Fortunately, more parents were willing to listen than got annoyed - and I did have one or two nasty responses. Oddly, they were both from the parents of big "club soccer" parents. And guess what -- I wasn't getting those kids anyway. The conclusion to this long ramble is that we had 10 more come out in the summer. And all of them are in offseason workouts now - or playing on the soccer team. I have chosen to encourage multi sport players. My coaches are only allowed to answer that question with the company line - "we encourage every one to play every SCHOOL sport they are interested in. It helps the school to build and grow to participate at the school".
So for the 2009 season I have 21 returning players who have all played before - never had that before. We have 4 incoming players whose parents have seen the change in the kids on the team in their neighborhood, and are joining the school. And we have a full JV program. And the JV teeam is 12-4 the last two years, but the HS team has only won 4.
If you can turn the parents - they will do so much of the numbers work for you. And they will stop paying attention the the BS those other coaches are trying to feed the young kids.
And hopefully this year - we can make the payoffs from our region for the first time. There is genuine excitement - the parent group has even donated weight room equipment. Get the kids on that - and we can have a real program.
Good luck to you, and if you need someone to bounce ideas off, just let me know. I have an even longer list of ways we've screwed the process up.
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Post by chuge325 on Apr 22, 2009 8:56:16 GMT -6
COPY OF EMAIL TO PARENTS REFENCED IN THE POST ABOVE
Hello parents and players,
Since we have had to change some of our off season scheduling by the new state rules and since I have had several parent questions on safety, I have done a little research into the reasoning behind some of the rules that have changed.
Some things that I have found out relating to football (and some other sports and activities)
1. How dangerous is football?
a. (from the Seattle Times) It's probably safer than kids getting in a car and driving on the highway," said Dr. Frederick Mueller, who heads the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research at the University of North Carolina.
Statistically, anyway, there's no comparison.
According to numbers compiled by Mueller's center, the death rate for football players at the high-school level last year was 0.13 per 100,000 (there were no deaths last year in college football).
The death rate for male drivers between the ages of 15 and 24 years old, meanwhile, is 48.2 per 100,000, according to numbers published in 2001 by the University of Maryland Medical Center.
"What I don't want people to do is all of a sudden stop playing football," said Dr. Richard Ellenbogen, the chief of neurosurgery at Harborview Medical Center and the University of Washington. "It's dangerous, but so is riding a bike, driving a car and simply living."
Ellenbogen's 11-year-old son plays football and the doctor says he "worries much more about kids riding bikes without helmets" than his son's safety during a football game.
Mueller's numbers indicate, in fact, that per 100,000 participants, football has a lower death rate than hockey, gymnastics, lacrosse and baseball, and much lower than competitive skiing.
b. (from NFHS) Injuries for high school and college cheerleaders have more than doubled since the early 1990s, according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, with the estimated number of emergency-room visits spiking from fewer than 12,000 in 1991 to about 28,000 in 2004. And no other sport comes within shouting distance of cheerleading in terms of major injuries, such as spinal and head trauma, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research, which is based at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Of the 101 catastrophic injuries sustained by female high school and college athletes between 1982 and 2004, 55 percent resulted from cheerleading—more than every other sport combined. Dr. Frederick Mueller, director of the center, puts it plainly: "There's no doubt that [cheerleading] is the most dangerous women's sport."
SOME WOULD SAY CHEERLEADING IS THE most dangerous sport, period. Recent statistics from the National Collegiate Athletic Association suggest that it may be even riskier than football, the sport it was created to support. Last year, the NCAA's Catastrophic Injury Insurance Program found that 25 percent of its claims for college student-athletes since 1998 have resulted from cheerleading. "[That is] second only to football, and football was not that far ahead of it," says Juanita Sheely, NCAA travel and insurance manager. When you consider the ratio of college cheerleaders to football players—about 12 to 100, estimates Sheely—that 25 percent figure is shocking.
c. (from NFHS) Over the past three years of study according to the National Federation of High School reports on sports medicine the highest incidences of major injury per 100,000 participants have been in cheerleading for women and soccer for men.
d. (from NCCSI) HEAT RELATED CONCERNS
A major concern in football fatalities has been the number of indirect deaths due to heat stroke, both at the college and high school levels. This number is unacceptable since heat stroke deaths are preventable with the proper precautions. Every effort should be made to continuously educate coaches concerning the proper procedures and precautions when practicing or playing in the heat. In the Annual Survey of Football Injury Research – 1931-2006 there are recommendations for safety during football activity in hot weather. New regulations by the National Collegiate Athletic Association for volunteer summer conditioning programs and pre-season football practice went into effect during the 2003 season and it will be very interesting to see how they effect heat related injuries at the college level.
TABLE 4:
HIGH SCHOOL FALL SPORTS
INDIRECT INJURIES PER 100,000 PARTICIPANTS
1982-1983 - 2005-2006
MALE / FEMALE
SPORT FATALITIES NON-FATAL SERIOUS
CROSS COUNTRY 0.37/0.22 0.00 0.00
FOOTBALL 0.49/0.0 0.00 0.01
SOCCER 0.39/0.13 0.00 0.00
WATER POLO (1992-94) 1.63 0.00 0.00
2. MOST OBVIOUS CONCLUSIONS
a. HEAT AND CONDITIONING - It is of primary concern based on all these numbers to be sure that the players (in any sport) are in condition and have time to acclimate to the heat. This is real information that indicates that the off season and summer conditioning are essential for the players safety. Heat injuries account for a greater and greater percentage of total injuries in high school sport. Conditioning, and to some degree weight training, are the
primary methods to reduce the rate of occurrence.
b. Football is NOT the most dangerous sport. According to many studies, soccer and cheerleading (on a national basis) have moved past football in per capita serious injury at the high school level. (Just look at the heat related catastrophic injury table above) There are more injuries in football, and there are more people playing it at the high school and jr. high levels nationally, but on a per player percentage football is not the most dangerous high school sport.
c. Many more serious injuries occur when teens ride in cars than do when they play any sport. In real life, it is more dangerous for a teenager to be in a car, then it is for them to be on a football field, or a soccer field, or a basketball court, etc.
d. Continued education of coaches, parents and players is the key to playing as safely as possible.
e. IT IS MY OPINION that our coaches at our school do an awesome job across the board in these areas. We can all improve the conditioning of our athletes as a whole, and you parents can help too. But I don't believe for a moment that a big part of the reason we have avoided catastrophic issues in our sports programs is that God has blessed us all with coaches who are working hard to teach our students how to play the games the right way.
If anyone has any questions, please let me know.
PLEASE - have your kids participate !!
God Bless
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