The Best Coach Ever
February 5, 2013
In the fall of 2004, another of the inductees with my father to the first-ever Hall of Fame Class of Stevens Point (WI) Area Senior High School was Rick Reichardt, arguably the best male athlete the community ever produced. Rick played four sports in high school, both football and baseball at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and on two Major League Baseball teams.
In his own acceptance speech that evening in 2004, Rick said that my dad was the best coach he ever had. Well, Dad was merely Rick’s Little League baseball coach.
That’s remarkable in and of itself. What’s more remarkable is that Dad never played organized baseball. He never developed the skills of the game. Yet Rick said Dad was his best coach ever.
Eventually, I’ve figured out Dad’s “secret of success.” Dad didn’t coach a sport. He coached people.
Our just-published winter issue of benchmarks is devoted to coaches like this and to the coaching profession. Read it here.
The Goldilocks Solution
December 2, 2014
Somewhere I read that there’s little to gain by trying to bring simplicity to what’s complex or sanity to what’s crazy. But we keep trying.
Last month we compiled results of a survey through which 513 MHSAA member high school athletic directors provided information about the out-of-season activities of their students and coaches and offered opinions regarding ideas to modify the rules that control those who want to do so much that it would force others to do more than they believe is sane for school-sponsored, student-centered competitive athletic programs.
A nearly equal number of schools from each classification were included in the 513 schools that responded to this opportunity to add more information and insight to this year-long look at MHSAA out-of-season coaching rules.
Some preliminary number crunching reveals (without surprise) that there are differences between large schools vs. small and more populated areas vs. less – differences both in the amount of organized out-of-season sports activity in which students engage and in the openness of their athletic directors to new ideas for regulating out-of-season activities by students with their school coaches. Generally, larger schools and/or schools in more populous areas see students participating in more organized out-of-season athletic activities, and they are more open to changing how those activities are regulated.
And so it continues ... finding that sweet spot that fits the perspectives and problems of a very diverse membership that supervises a wide variety of sports. The “Goldilocks” solution that doesn’t do too much, or too little.
The results that I’ll be looking for as we continue to gather information and facilitate discussions is no specific set of rule changes, but rather, to move MHSAA policies and procedures toward these two goals:
- Rules simpler to understand, follow and enforce. Even good rules are bad if they are too cumbersome.
- Rules that do not add pressure on students or coaches to focus on a single sport year-round. There is plenty of data that informs us that parents do too much of that already.