Category: Coaching

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Promoting and Communicating Your Team Via a Team Website

When I started coaching I was told that a coach wears many different hats– teacher, counselor, administrator, role model, etc.  For today’s coaches, the world is demanding one more hat to wear–website manager/administrator.  People get their “news” in the palm of their hand (their smart phone or tablet).  Even television “news” is beginning to see the impact of social media.  In the “old days” the media would come to you and your school seeking information– to interview coaches, take pictures, get rosters, etc. Today, the local paper no longer comes to you.   The print media is a dying business and to stay afloat it’s fast becoming more electronic.  Because of this, coaches have to put on their own promoter hats and generate team news and information.  Put figuratively, a webpage is like your “front porch.” If kept attractive and clean– regularly updated and loaded with interesting news and information your athletes, parents, fans, and community will visit it often.  They’ll want to “sit on it” with their friends and have conversations with you and your coaches.

Almost two years ago, we contracted with a national website management company – National Amateur Sports – to create an athletic website for our large school district, and for each of our schools and each of their sports teams.  Why did we do this and what were the selling points in getting buy-in from our schools? I’m about to explain because my goal in this article is to convince you of the value of doing whatever it takes to establish and maintain a team webpage for your program and athletes.

For a good many years, our coaches and athletic directors had been constantly complaining about the lack of media coverage.  About twenty years ago, our local newspaper The Greenville News, was our state’s largest newspaper.  The coverage our high school sports teams received was phenomenal.  They reported on virtually all of our sports teams as well as football and basketball throughout the entire state.  They sponsored events such as district-wide track meets and coordinated and gave coverage to all-district teams in most sports.  Slowly, all of this disappeared.  The newspaper’s circulation dropped significantly, its staff shrunk in size, and our sports team’s media coverage became a trickle.  Most days, there is now not even a single item on high school sports in our local paper’s sports section. Although most coaches hardly noticed this subtle paradigm shift, shift it did and so must we! I’m guessing the above story is a familiar one in your own community because of the tidal wave of 24/7 news coverage via social media through smartphones, tablets, and smart TV’s.  These devices, in concert with the Internet are driving change. It’s happening in every community across the country and around the world.  Today, I get my newspaper delivered electronically and read it on my I-pad.  Everywhere you see people gathering, they are glued to their smartphones reading or sending tweets or texts, and getting news and sports updates, instagram’s, and instant messages from major news and sports media outlets. We can now follow games with live streaming and get live scoring via website links. It’s a whole new world and it is how people expect news and information to be shared with them.

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Psychological Skills Training: Body Rehearsal*

Continuing our Psychological Skills Training series in pelinks4u, this article focuses on getting the most out of the physical motions of sport by paying attention to how the motion feels. To focus on how the motion feels, we will utilize previously learned skills you can access from the pelinks4u archives: Getting Loose (Dec. 2011), Breathing Easy (Feb. 2013), Staying on the Ball (June/July 2013) & Mental Rehearsal I (Dec. 2013). I am sharing a coach’s script you can use with your athletes, and a handout for athletes to use when practicing at home.

Psychological Skills Training series: previous issues

  1. Training Your Athletes to be Mentally Tough
  2. Mental Training Tools
  3. Goal Setting and Self-Confidence
  4. Imagery
  5. Relaxation and Energization
  6. Self-Talk Skills
  7. Energy Management
  8. Stress Management Skills
  9. Breathing Easy Drill
  10. Staying on the Ball Drill
  11. Mental Rehearsal, Phase I
  12. Mental Rehearsal, Phase II

Coach’s Script: Body Rehearsal

Bring to Practice: coach’s script, copies of the athlete’s handout.

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Back to Basics Coaching and Teaching Physical Education

When our school district developed our “Injury Prevention Initiative” a little over two years ago (see November, 2011 article in pelinks4u, “An Injury Prevention Initiative Based Upon the Functional Movement Screen [FMS]”), little did we realize the impact it would make. We initiated this injury prevention program by mandating all athletic teams incorporate the recommendations into their warm-up routines. Since then, we have cut the number of surgeries resulting from athletic injuries by over 40%.

The results were so dramatic that I’m now hounding our district’s physical education specialists to begin using these functional movement exercises in all of our elementary and middle school physical education classes. My thinking is based upon the huge impact Gray Cook and Lee Burton have made with their Functional Movement Screen and the exercises designed to enhance FMS scores and athletic performance.

This fall, I came across an article and video, “Yes, kids are stars on the playing field, but can they do a push-up?” (Nancy Cambria, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 21, 2013). I was pleasantly surprised by what was in the article and attached video, and started looking at what’s happening in our society to our youth-their activity levels, outdoor time, and obesity levels. The focus of Cambria’s article was:

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The Wooden Way: Continuing to Learn as a Coach

Arguably, there has been no greater role model for coaches in any sport than legendary coach John Wooden (Gilbert, 2010). Often considered the greatest coach of all time (Nater & Gallimore, 2010), Wooden has been inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame both as a player and a coach (Davis, 2014). He won ten NCAA basketball championships from 1964 to 1975 as the Head Men’s Basketball Coach at UCLA (Jenkins, 2014).

 

In 1999, a panel of ESPN experts named him the greatest collegiate coach of the 20th Century (Ermeling, 2012), and in 2003 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the United States Government (Gilbert, 2010). In his retirement, Wooden became a best-selling author and was a sought after keynote speaker well into his late 90’s.

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A Tale of Two Contrasts: Being a Coach and Being Coached

I have been coached and I have coached. And the differences between these two experiences is a tale to be told.

 

I am an athlete, maybe a little on the grey side, but still an athlete. I skate weekly and I was at one time a high level skater. But I was also an athlete in team sports. I played softball both slow and fast pitch. I was pretty good and pretty bad at the same time. As Frank Deford (2014) would say – I played real sport, the ultimate where one individual goes directly against another, mano-a-mano – where you must not only compete, but also compete against your rival’s attempts to stop you.

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2013 Dr. Bob Frederick Sport Leadership Lecture Series, Part 3

Five leaders in sport are featured in the final part of a three-issue series of presentations shared by PHE America from the Dr. Bob Frederick Sport Leadership Lecture Series. The five sport leaders include the City of Lewiston, Idaho Parks and Recreation Director, Tim Barker; Washington State University Executive Director for University Recreation, Kathleen Hatch; Washington State University Director of Facilities and Finance for University Recreation, Jeff Elbracht; University of Idaho Director of Intramural Sports, Butch Fealy; and University of Idaho Aquatic Manager, Dan Lawson.

Dr. Bob Frederick

 

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2013 Dr. Bob Frederick Sport Leadership Lecture Series, Part 2

Last month we featured three presenters from the recent Dr. Bob Frederick Sport Leadership Lecture Series. This month, we continue with audio links to the presentations of four additional sport leaders. These include Washington State University Director of Athletics, Bill Moos; Lewis-Clark State College (ID) Athletic Director, Gary Picone; University of Idaho Professor, Sharon Stoll; and Washington State University Professor, Cathryn Claussen.

Dr. Bob Frederick

WSU Director of Athletics, Bill Moos shared his vast experience and expertise in athletic administration in a presentation entitled: Leadership in Collegiate Athletics-Keys to Success. Throughout his presentation he discussed the importance of building your brand and building a blueprint for success. “Get your building blocks and foundation in place and then make sure you hire the right people. At Washington State we hired people that believe they can win at Washington State and want to be at Washington State,” stated Moos.

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