Keep on Coaching
February 1, 2013
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
A few weeks ago, I finally got my first chance this season to watch a friend coach his basketball team. After guiding some others at the lower levels, this is his first time running the varsity – something he wasn't sure he wanted to do with a 1-year-old just learning to walk, but a challenge he ended up taking on to the benefit of all those involved.
Simply put, he’s good. I've seen a lot of teams and a lot of coaches over the past 15 years, and although I wouldn't know much of what to do if I were walking the sideline, I felt pretty qualified in telling him I was impressed – even if he didn't buy that I was offering an unbiased opinion. The best news is he’s gone from not sure about this a few months ago to talking about next season.
We know, at least anecdotally, that coaching continues to get more challenging. The time commitment has grown substantially to make running a program a year-round endeavor in a lot of sports at a lot of schools.
That commitment – especially for coaches with children of their own – was a main reason referred to in a New Haven Post-Chronicle story Saturday that noted 23 football coaching openings in Connecticut at one point this offseason. That state has 146 football teams – meaning roughly 15 percent will have new leaders this fall.
And that got me thinking about my friend, about how glad I am he’s given this a shot, and how I've seen so many others either not do so, or not stick around long despite having some pretty nice success.
A study published last winter in Interscholastic Athletic Administration magazine – a product of the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association – noted some predictable results of a study that sought to determine the biggest challenges faced by first-year high school coaches.
The toughest according to the study was balancing the demands of coaching and teaching, experienced by nearly half the respondents – 98 percent of which coached high school teams and 81 percent of which are teachers.
The next six reasons all were noted by at least 30 percent of those in the study – personal fatigue, securing community support, securing and caring for facilities and equipment, parental contact, keeping non-starting players motivated, dealing with schedule interruptions and motivating athletes to achieve consistent, peak performance.
Nothing there is earth-shaking, and most if not all of these challenges are faced by high school coaches regardless of how long they've been in the field. But I got a little more perspective from some of the 32 items that ranked as least challenging to the first-year leaders – keeping in compliance with state and league regulations, dealing with substance abuse issues, teaching sport skills and creating a positive team atmosphere – things that seem most important, and yet appear to be easiest to do. I’m not sure what that tells us – but I think it tells us something.
Click to check out the entire three-page breakdown of the study, plus the researchers’ recommendations to remedy some of what first-year coaches face.
Giving back to Saginaw
I love reading about high-level athletes – like a star-studded group of alums from Saginaw – giving back to where they got their starts.
Pittsburgh Steelers star LaMarr Woodley made a big impact before the start of this school year by donating $60,000 to cover all participation fees for athletes in his former school district. The Saginaw News’ Hugh Bernreuter writes today about how Woodley (Saginaw High), the Philadelphia 76ers’ Jason Richardson (Saginaw Arthur Hill) and former Oakland Raiders standout Stu Schweigert (Saginaw Heritage) have combined to give more than $865,000 back to their home communities.
Bernreuter also mentions the non-monetary contributions of the Golden State Warriors’ Draymond Green (Saginaw High) and former Indianapolis Colts receiver Blair White (Saginaw Nouvel).
Click to read more about it.
Quote(s) of the Week
While rifling through more papers on my desk, I found an article from the Washington Post from Sept. 2011 titled “How high school sports save our schools.” I was drawn to it in part because I spent more than a decade in a newsroom, and it was a piece by a reporter covering education who instead of reporting on school boards and the like, delved into the importance of interscholastic athletics to education as a whole.
He spoke of how participation continues to grow even as resources dwindle, and of data supporting that extracurriculars like sports are more effective than academic classes in teaching leadership, teamwork, time management and “other skills crucial for success in the workplace.” Later, he mentioned a study noting that those who participate in extracurriculars earned more a decade later.
Click here to read the entre piece. These passages struck me most.
“Coaches might be the only faculty members still allowed by our culture and educational practice to get tough with students not making the proper effort. They have the advantage of teaching what are essentially elective non-credit courses. They can insist on standards of behavior that classroom teachers often cannot enforce because the stakes of dismissing or letting students drop their courses are too high. …
“Students do better in activities they choose. If we provide more of them, led by committed adults … that can make a difference. We know the bad news about education. Dropout rates are high. Achievement scores are stagnant. But sports participation is going up, despite pressure to cut it back. Let’s cheer about that and look for a way to draw in more students.”
Marysville, St. Clair Join Together to Honor Beloved Coach with Rivalry Trophy
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
October 11, 2023
Denny White brought quite a bit to the Marysville and St. Clair communities.
In 1961, as a junior in high school, White was part of the first team to bring a football state title to Marysville.
Fifty years later, as an assistant coach, he played a vital role in bringing St. Clair its first MHSAA Finals title in baseball.
During the years in between, and decade after, White brought his knowledge of and passion for those sports to hundreds of student athletes.
But most recently, he brought the two communities together.
This past Friday night, the rival schools played for the Denny White Trophy, an award created to honor the late coach and connect the two communities where he was most revered.
“I’m so happy with all the support that has been around the project,” said Brady Beedon, a family friend who helped to create the trophy and was in the booth calling Friday night’s game for Get Stuck On Sports. “It’s the least we could’ve done for a man who helped so many athletes. His legacy deserves to be preserved.”
In a fitting tribute to White, who died Jan. 22 of this year following a long battle with cancer, the two teams played a hard-fought game at East China Stadium, with White’s alma mater Marysville coming away with a 25-20 victory.
Both teams featured players who had been coached by White at some point in one or both of the sports, as his time on the bench lasted through the fall of 2022.
That season, he coached the JV B football team at Marysville. Most recently before that, he had been the varsity baseball coach at St. Clair from 2015-21.
“Not much can unify rivals, but Coach White’s influence goes beyond that rivalry,” Marysville football coach Derrick Meier said at a press conference unveiling the trophy. “He’s affected thousands of local athletes. … It is awesome that someone had such an influence across the board with all local athletes (in multiple) sports. I contacted him my first year coaching varsity, and he was not willing to leave where he was at. I called him three subsequent years; he graciously declined. The last year he did accept, we added a JV B team, his wisdom and knowledge went well beyond just coaching on the field. We’re all lucky for his influence.
“Heroes get remembered. Coach White will be remembered.”
White was a 1963 graduate of Marysville, who then attended Ferris State and Central Michigan. His coaching journey did not begin in the area where he grew up, however, as he coached baseball and football at Newaygo High School before coming to St. Clair.
He spent 35 years in the Saints athletic program, coaching baseball and multiple levels of football.
Much of his time was spent as the pitching coach for St. Clair for coaches Richie Mallewitz and Bill McElreath. That included the 2011 season, when his pitching staff included current major leaguer Jacob Cronenworth, who now plays second base for the San Diego Padres.
Also on that staff were Joel Seddon, who was drafted twice – once out of high school and again after college – and would go on to be the closer at South Carolina; and Jared Tobey, who pitched at Wayne State and was drafted by the Detroit Tigers, playing four years in their minor league system.
While White coached nearly 1,000 baseball games in his career, he was involved with more than just high school sports. He also coached a 13-year-old Little League team to a state title and the semifinals of the Great Lakes Regional in 2015.
No matter the level, White poured all he had into coaching, and that included his final season on the sidelines at Marysville, just months prior to his passing.
“Every single kid that he touched with that team, you could just tell, gravitated toward him immediately,” said Travis Disser, who coached with White that final year at Marysville. “His lessons and his light-hearted humor are just something that you can’t replace, or ever hope to. I was lucky enough to learn pitching from Coach White when I was a younger kid, as well. He was the exact same Denny White as he was all those years ago, as he was last year during his battle with cancer. Coach White was a warrior in every sense of the term. His lessons, both on the field and off the field from him, are something that I’ll never, ever forget.”
The idea to create the trophy honoring White came about not long after his death, as Beedon worked with Meier, former St. Clair athletic director Denny Borse and St. Clair assistant football coach T.J. Schindler to create and design the trophy.
The final product is a two-tiered trophy topped with a pair White’s hats – one from St. Clair, the other from Marysville – that have been bronzed. It includes the years in which he won his state titles at his respective schools, and a passage about his life. There is also room to list the yearly winners, as it is planned to represent the rivalry and shared respect for White in the two communities for years to come.
“Whether it was Little League kids over the last 20 years, or some of the football players and baseball players that he coached over the decades that he coached, all of them when they get together have great stories and fondness for all the memories that (White and his fellow coaches) helped them create,” said Sandy Rutledge, the current St. Clair athletic director and a longtime friend and colleague of White. “I think it’s awesome that now as we play for this trophy every year, it will give our coaches a chance to kind of explain who Coach was. The next generation, maybe they didn’t even know him, will know that he is a legend, and he’ll always be remembered.”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS (Top) From left: St. Clair’s Larry Wawryzniak, Liam Nesbitt and Peyton Ellis, Denny White’s wife Karen White, and Marysville’s Bryce Smith, Carter Saccucci and Caz Carty stand with the first-year traveling trophy celebrating Denny White’s coaching career. (Middle) White was a mainstay in the area’s sports community for more than six decades. (Below) The trophy celebrates his contributions to both schools and will list the winners of their annual football game. (Trophy photos courtesy of Brady Beedon. Headshot courtesy of the White family.)