This is a 4-part series on the Lewis-Clark Valley Loggers, a college-level football program composed of men who play and coach for the love of the game.
Part 3: It’s All About the Kids
Lewis-Clark State College provides a supportive and affordable learning environment. Students choose it because they want small classes sizes, meaningful interactions with faculty and other students, and education opportunities rich in experiential learning. One student-athlete shared that he learned about the Logger program through a visit to his high school by an LCSC recruiter. He found that the combination presented an opportunity he couldn’t pass up – an affordable college, even for an out-of-state student, that provided a chance to play football, a sport he loved. He shared, “I wanted to play college football, but it was either go play at [a private university] and pay $60,000 or go, you know, be a roster dummy, be a practice dummy at, say, [an out-of-state school] or somewhere, and it worked out perfectly that I’d come to LC, [where] school was actually cheaper, play for the Loggers and actually play. [I] ended up starting game one and never looked back.”
This is a 4-part series on the Lewis-Clark Valley Loggers, a college-level football program composed of men who play and coach for the love of the game.
Part 2: An Idea and a Dream Bob Could Not Let Go
Bob Thorson
The Director of the LC Valley Logger Football Program, Bob Thorson has an interesting and diverse past. An alum of LC State, he has an MBA and specializes in Marketing. His early career focused on music. At one time, Bob owned a record store in Lewiston, Idaho, DJ’d, and worked in local concert promotions. Additionally, he worked at LC State as a Marketing professor. In 2012, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Surgery to remove the tumor affected his vision and sensation on the right side of his body. It was during his recovery that he shifted his focus from college teaching to realizing his dream of creating the LC Valley Loggers football program.
Raised as a Minnesota Vikings fan, Bob, at the age of four years old, began to develop a love for the game. It was his summers in high school visiting his grandparents in the small town of Northfield, Minnesota that led to him dreaming about creating a college football program in his hometown. If competitive football programs, like St. Olaf College and Carleton College, could have success in the small town of Northfield, why couldn’t it happen in Lewiston, Idaho?
This is a 4-part series on the Lewis-Clark Valley Loggers, a college-level football program composed of men who play and coach for the love of the game.
Part 1: For the Love of the Game
What is it about college sports that creates such loyal and ardent followers and passionate participants? Is it the allure of the high from the victory that keeps people coming back even after they suffer through the low of defeat? Is it the connection to something more than one’s self or the opportunity to create an identity around engagement in something with others? Or, is it just simply the love of a game?
It’s a good idea to move the location of your hand-holds periodically to keep the climbing wall interesting and challenging for climbers over time. In doing so, you can create specific climbing routes, of varying difficulty levels, for climbers to try.
What Is a Climbing Route? A climbing route is a specific path the climber must follow to reach the top, or end, of a climb.
How Are Climbing Routes Marked? Routes can be marked with tape next to holds that are on the route. Or the same color hand-hold can be used throughout a route. Many climbing walls include color-coded hand-holds which makes it easier to set routes by color. Each color corresponds to a certain difficulty level enabling route setters to set climbing routes of varying degrees of challenge.
The process a coach uses to develop an athlete can be applied to assist coaches in pursuing a successful head coaching career. Due to the numerous roles and responsibilities, qualified coaches’ preparation and training have become a topic of great importance. New coaches should pursue experiences and opportunities that lend themselves well towards successful head coaching tenures. Findings from a pilot study of twelve NCAA Division I head coaches identified three considerations for assistant coaches pursuing head coaching positions: finding a coaching mentor, gaining coaching experience, and pursuing coaching education.
Photo of Kelly Carlstrom, Basketball Coach, Troy High School (ID)
Coaching Mentors Lyle (1986) describes mentoring as essential in young coaches’ development because learning from more experienced coaches occurs. Learning how to coach effectively is facilitated by participating in informal and formal learning communities with coaching peers (Gilbert, Gallimore, & Trudel, 2009), who may serve as professional mentors. In a study conducted by Irwin, Hanton, and Kerwin (2004), 91% of coaches in the study identified mentoring as very important in developing elite coaching knowledge. Mentors not only socialize mentees into the profession, but they also help their mentee navigate problems or consider important decision-making factors, to eliminate fumbling over unseen obstacles later on in one’s career (Abravanel, 2012). Citing Coakley’s (1990) initial work acknowledges the importance of veteran coaches on the careers of those who would like to become a full-time coach and suggests that younger coaches’ future usually depends on the sponsorship of established coaches serving as a mentor. Once a mentor has been identified and a relationship established, assistant coaches should gain as much coaching experience as possible.
Coaching Experience Years of experience as an athlete may influence the developmental stage of learning to coach (Gilbert & Trudel, 2005) and coaches draw on their own experiences, interactions with other coaches, and numerous athletes’ experiences to employ their coaching development (Lynch & Mallett, 2008). While rookie coaches may possess a great coach’s inherent qualities, it is still pertinent to gain a variety of quality coaching experiences (i.e., different athletes, facilities, coaching strategies) in fostering coaching learning and improvement.
Advocacy for health and physical education is crucial, now more than ever. During this global pandemic, we need to shout from the mountaintops how important health and physical education is for our student’s physical, social, and emotional health. The more we speak out and advocate for our profession, the more people will listen, inspiring change. Until physical education is no longer a marginalized subject and a critical component of every school’s curriculum, we need to come together and rally for our profession.
One positive outcome from teaching during a pandemic is that parents and guardians see first-hand the value of movement and fitness and how it enhances focus, attention, drive, and provides stress relief. Some physical education teachers have used this platform of teaching during the pandemic to showcase quality physical education lessons that include amazing ways of teaching physical literacy and connecting with our students. Parents are seeing physical literacy in action and are taking notice of all the changes in health and physical education from when they were children and how it has evolved.
(Editor’s Note: The article is adapted from the upcoming book Cornfields to Gold Medals: The Story of Coach Don Showalter and 15 GOLD Lessons from a Life of Leadership)
(3 Minute Read)
Coach Showalter glances at his phone as he and his coaching staff circulate across the dormitory. The digital display read 2:55 AM. At 3:00 AM, in unison, each coach knocks on a door and in their coaching voice shouts, “Get-up! Get-up! Time to rise!” Within a few seconds, teenagers appear; eyes squinted as they adjust to the light; brows furrowed, perhaps an annoyed expression but likely more in an inquisitive nature, curious about the early wake-up call. The coaches hand them a piece of paper with directions to follow, but no explanation. The youth retreat to get dressed as the coaches made their way to the commons area, a large open space outside the dormitory.
2017 USA Basketball Men’s U16 National Team vs Canada (6/18/17), Formosa, Argentina.
It was 2018 and the USA Basketball Junior National Team was in the middle of an eight-day training camp at the United States Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, CO in preparation for the U17 World Championships in Argentina. The teenagers are 16-17-year-old elite-level athletes, the best in the United States. The directions on the piece of paper state to be outside in the commons area by 3:10 AM in full workout gear. As the athletes converge on the commons area they are met by the coaches and another gentleman, unfamiliar to them. At 3:10, Coach Showalter orders all athletes present into a plank position, a core strength exercise. The athletes stay in the plank position until all their teammates are present, as a few stumble in late.
