While I mentioned before that my only losing record in a team sport was my 30-31 record in basketball at Central Junior High in Lovington. If you look at just winning and losing from a team standpoint then my least successful coaching at Central would have been track. While I am one of those who think of track and field as a team sport I believe that you can be successful in the sport even as a coach by having success with individuals and relays.
Looking back at my records from the three years I coached at Central it was obvious where I placed the emphasis for my athletes. It wasn't on team wins and losses it was on individual and therefore team effort, improvement, willingness to work, willingness to compete where it could help the team as well as provide you with opportunities to improve, attitude, success in the classroom, goal setting. And if I look at my result sheets from 2005 almost 30 years later, the emphasis was still the same.
Here are some comments from my team newsletters from 1979:
"we still had many individual performances that promise some good things"
"you should all have serious goals now and be more willing to work hard in practice to achieve them"
"the type of attitude it's going to take for us to see improvement"
"we are displeased with the lack of toughness"
"best team effort......also pleased with the turnout and effort put out at Monday's workout"
"the most negative thing Saturday was some of the quitting that took place"
"Although our total points don't show it necessarily, this was by far the best total team performance of the year by both the 8th and 9th grade teams" - Border Conference Championship Meet 1979
In that final meet of the year, 15 of 19 8th graders and 10 of 17 9th graders had personal/season bests. That is how I determined success with track athletes.
Two things stand out from the 1980 result sheets that I handed out to my athletes; the first came from newsletter #1 and pretty much laid out my expectations for the individuals on the team:
"YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO YOURSELF AND THIS TEAM:
Your responsibility is to do each assignment at 100% of your capacity regardless of how you personally feel. The coaches have the responsibility of directing the team to its maximum potential. You have the responsibility to carry out all the assignments so the maximum potential of this team can be reached".
And the final comment on the final result sheet of the season after the Border Conference Championship:
"Again congratulations to those of you who had personal bests and to those who set and met goals. Remember, goals are made to be achieved, keep setting them and making them. Good luck in track and x-country next year".
I learned a lot about coaching track those three years at Central. Between my own experience running for Coach Clark in High School and even from Coach Ruh at Mt. SAC, a "Coaching Track and Field course my freshman year in college, reading many books and articles about track and working with Scottie Watkins the head coach in Lovington I had a good foundation to become the high school coach that I eventually became.
The results from 28 years of coaching track show that my basic philosophy of coaching track that was indicated in the 79 and 80 quotes, never changed. It was always about what could I do as a coach to help each individual become the best they could be and then to place those individuals where they could be most successful for himself as well as for the team. Future results will show that the system worked.
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Central Junior High Volleyball, Lovington, New Mexico
As I mentioned before I got involved with the volleyball program as a volunteer and it turned into four seasons coaching the Central Kittens first as the 8th grade coach and then the 9th grade coach. It was another example in my coaching carer of putting myself in a position that could lead to additional coaching opportunities. As I've said I was hired at Central primarily to coach basketball with track being a secondary option. Volleyball was never on the table. The irony is that of the three sports, I was least successful in basketball and probably enjoyed it the least because I never really felt competent.
Playing volleyball myself with the coed team from Rimgrove Park provided me with some basic knowledge fundamental skills of the game, working as a volunteer for one season taught me a lot about teaching the skills and team strategy and as I did with basketball, I read everything I could find on coaching the sport so I felt much more comfortable coaching volleyball than basketball. Once again, knowing the rule book from cover to cover was very important.
Had I not moved from the junior high to the high school to teach after five years who knows, my career might have gone in a different direction because I was a pretty competent volleyball coach unlike basketball where I was basically just a warm body doing the best I could to fill a need.
My first year with the 8th grade team we finished 7-4 and 3rd in the Border Conference. The second year we 8-2 and won the conference championship. The next year I was moved to the 9th grade program and we were 7-3 and 3rd in the conference again. We had gone into that season with high hopes because it was basically the same team that had won the championship in 8th grade.
The issue with that particular team was that we simply couldn't put teams away when we had the chance. We would win the first game and then for whatever reason there was a let down in the second game and we would lose sending the match to a third game that we won more than we lost. I was looking at my written summary of that 1980 season and some things that stood out were our inability to put a team away and our struggles getting our serves over the net consistently. "...we still faced a problem the entire season that eventually cost us a share of the conference championship, we couldn't put a team away in the second game". And, "We couldn't get our serves over (another problem all season) and lost...". At the end of my summary I wrote the following, "One final comment. Last year we were able to serve in the gym before school every morning. This year because we didn't have the gym, we couldn't. I think it made all the difference in the world". That reminded me, we didn't even have a gym that year because our floor was being refinished and so our practices were at another school as were our "home" games. With that in mind I would say that the kids had a pretty successful season. , My final season was 1981 and we finished 3-5. We had a good chance to be 5-5 but probably the weakest team on our schedule canceled both games because of scheduling conflicts.
My overall record as a volleyball coach for those four years was 25-14. I enjoyed coaching volleyball and just like any sport I coached I learned a lot that I was able to use in my future coaching roles. There is so much carry over from sport to sport where basic coaching is concerned. Volunteering that first year was another example of giving myself a chance to be ready when an opportunity presented itself.
Playing volleyball myself with the coed team from Rimgrove Park provided me with some basic knowledge fundamental skills of the game, working as a volunteer for one season taught me a lot about teaching the skills and team strategy and as I did with basketball, I read everything I could find on coaching the sport so I felt much more comfortable coaching volleyball than basketball. Once again, knowing the rule book from cover to cover was very important.
Had I not moved from the junior high to the high school to teach after five years who knows, my career might have gone in a different direction because I was a pretty competent volleyball coach unlike basketball where I was basically just a warm body doing the best I could to fill a need.
My first year with the 8th grade team we finished 7-4 and 3rd in the Border Conference. The second year we 8-2 and won the conference championship. The next year I was moved to the 9th grade program and we were 7-3 and 3rd in the conference again. We had gone into that season with high hopes because it was basically the same team that had won the championship in 8th grade.
The issue with that particular team was that we simply couldn't put teams away when we had the chance. We would win the first game and then for whatever reason there was a let down in the second game and we would lose sending the match to a third game that we won more than we lost. I was looking at my written summary of that 1980 season and some things that stood out were our inability to put a team away and our struggles getting our serves over the net consistently. "...we still faced a problem the entire season that eventually cost us a share of the conference championship, we couldn't put a team away in the second game". And, "We couldn't get our serves over (another problem all season) and lost...". At the end of my summary I wrote the following, "One final comment. Last year we were able to serve in the gym before school every morning. This year because we didn't have the gym, we couldn't. I think it made all the difference in the world". That reminded me, we didn't even have a gym that year because our floor was being refinished and so our practices were at another school as were our "home" games. With that in mind I would say that the kids had a pretty successful season. , My final season was 1981 and we finished 3-5. We had a good chance to be 5-5 but probably the weakest team on our schedule canceled both games because of scheduling conflicts.
My overall record as a volleyball coach for those four years was 25-14. I enjoyed coaching volleyball and just like any sport I coached I learned a lot that I was able to use in my future coaching roles. There is so much carry over from sport to sport where basic coaching is concerned. Volunteering that first year was another example of giving myself a chance to be ready when an opportunity presented itself.
Monday, March 23, 2015
Central Junior High Basketball, Lovington, New Mexico
When I arrived in Lovington to teach and coach my only coaching experience was park and rec youth and adult and the one season that I coached basketball in Ruidoso but as soon as I knew I was going to be coaching basketball and track I did what I have always done when faced with a challenge, I got books. I read books not just on teaching the skills of the sports but I read everything I could about coaches, sport psychology, motivation, team building and so on. In other words I became a student of coaching.
Before I coached my first basketball team at Lovington Central I was a volunteer assistant coach with the volleyball teams. Basically that meant I chased balls but the experience I received watching the coach and being on the sideline at games turned out to be very valuable. Up until that point my only volleyball experience was as a player coach on a coed park and rec team. The reason it proved valuable is that I found myself hired to coach volleyball the next year at Central and coached it for four years.
Ironically it was that early in my coaching career that I found myself becoming too caught up in never turning down an opportunity to coach. Before I left Central Junior High I was paid to coach junior high volleyball, basketball and track and was volunteering with the high school cross country and track teams. While there were many years in my career where I only coached cross country and track the last four years of my career I was coaching five varsity teams during the school year. I was head coach of boys cross country, girls cross country, girls swimming, boys track and girls track. Looking back I can honestly say that I was spread too thin and it took it's toll on me emotionally more than anything else. If asked today what I would have cut out it would be an easy answer, swimming first and boys track second. Coaching both cross country teams was never an issue because I always coached them both the same, it was basically coaching a coed team.
Anyway, back to Central Junior High and my early coaching experience. I wound up coaching basketball for four years. The first two years I coached 8th grade boys and the last two 8th grade girls. I was never more than a warm body when it came to coaching basketball. I worked hard to learn the basics of the game and I knew the rule book inside out but I was coaching in an area where the winningest high school basketball coach in the country oversaw three of our District opponents and they were in a whole different world. Most of the coaches in those programs had come up through his programs and knew basketball inside out. Even the girls teams in the Hobbs schools were required to run the same type of programs run at Hobbs High School where the legend, Ralph Tasker was head coach of the boys team. His boys team held the national record for most points scored per game among others. It was a tough place to get my feet wet but it was also a good place for me to learn that I didn't want to be a basketball coach any longer than necessary.
My boys teams were 8-8 the first year and 7-8 the second so the 15-16 record was the only losing record I had coaching in Lovington. My girls teams were 9-6 and 6-9 so my overall basketball record at Lovington was 30-31. Not too bad for someone the kids used to love watching during timeouts because my hands were shaking so bad when I was drawing up a play on the chalkboard.
I did learn a lot of valuable things coaching basketball though about teamwork, motivation, dealing with losing, dealing with parents, trying to work with too many kids and keeping them all motivated and somewhat happy. You can see from the pictures that my teams were huge, we weren't allowed to cut and that was fine with me because I never cut an athlete for lack of ability in the 29 years I coached. This proved to be a valuable trait especially when I started coaching track and cross country.
Before I coached my first basketball team at Lovington Central I was a volunteer assistant coach with the volleyball teams. Basically that meant I chased balls but the experience I received watching the coach and being on the sideline at games turned out to be very valuable. Up until that point my only volleyball experience was as a player coach on a coed park and rec team. The reason it proved valuable is that I found myself hired to coach volleyball the next year at Central and coached it for four years.
Ironically it was that early in my coaching career that I found myself becoming too caught up in never turning down an opportunity to coach. Before I left Central Junior High I was paid to coach junior high volleyball, basketball and track and was volunteering with the high school cross country and track teams. While there were many years in my career where I only coached cross country and track the last four years of my career I was coaching five varsity teams during the school year. I was head coach of boys cross country, girls cross country, girls swimming, boys track and girls track. Looking back I can honestly say that I was spread too thin and it took it's toll on me emotionally more than anything else. If asked today what I would have cut out it would be an easy answer, swimming first and boys track second. Coaching both cross country teams was never an issue because I always coached them both the same, it was basically coaching a coed team.
Anyway, back to Central Junior High and my early coaching experience. I wound up coaching basketball for four years. The first two years I coached 8th grade boys and the last two 8th grade girls. I was never more than a warm body when it came to coaching basketball. I worked hard to learn the basics of the game and I knew the rule book inside out but I was coaching in an area where the winningest high school basketball coach in the country oversaw three of our District opponents and they were in a whole different world. Most of the coaches in those programs had come up through his programs and knew basketball inside out. Even the girls teams in the Hobbs schools were required to run the same type of programs run at Hobbs High School where the legend, Ralph Tasker was head coach of the boys team. His boys team held the national record for most points scored per game among others. It was a tough place to get my feet wet but it was also a good place for me to learn that I didn't want to be a basketball coach any longer than necessary.
My boys teams were 8-8 the first year and 7-8 the second so the 15-16 record was the only losing record I had coaching in Lovington. My girls teams were 9-6 and 6-9 so my overall basketball record at Lovington was 30-31. Not too bad for someone the kids used to love watching during timeouts because my hands were shaking so bad when I was drawing up a play on the chalkboard.
I did learn a lot of valuable things coaching basketball though about teamwork, motivation, dealing with losing, dealing with parents, trying to work with too many kids and keeping them all motivated and somewhat happy. You can see from the pictures that my teams were huge, we weren't allowed to cut and that was fine with me because I never cut an athlete for lack of ability in the 29 years I coached. This proved to be a valuable trait especially when I started coaching track and cross country.
Friday, March 20, 2015
Detour
When I didn't get the job at Ruidoso I still worked for the cable company but knew I wanted to find a job where I could use my degree. My memory isn't good enough to remember the circumstances but I found and interviewed for a job as a District Executive with the Boy Scouts of America. I had been involved in scouting from the time I was in elementary school all the way through high school. As a matter of fact the summer after high school I was working at the San Gabriel Valley scout camp in the San Bernardino Mountains as the camp's commissary director. It was while working there that I received my Eagle Scout award along with friend and former high school track and cross country teammate Don O'Brien.
I got the job with the Scout Council that was headquartered in Roswell, New Mexico and served all of Southeastern, New Mexico. The unfortunate part was that it didn't include Ruidoso and was going to require us to move. I took the job and we sold our home in Ruidoso and bought a new home in Hobbs.
A requirement for the job was that I attend the National Executive Institute in Mendham, New Jersey for training. The course was several weeks long and covered all areas necessary to be successful as an executive with the BSA.
I remember that we had a lot of classroom time while we were at NEI and we also had a lot of outdoor activity and competition. We lived eight to a cabin and the competitions were held between cabins.
I've often wondered how many, if any of the guys made a career of scouting. There were certainly a lot of positive things about the job and even many things I learned that certainly carried over into my preparation as a coach. The negative part was that there was so much administration involved. So much of the job involved being a politician and selling the program to businesses and organizations.
While I was in New Jersey my wife sent me a new article from the Hobbs News Sun talking about the average salary of teachers in Lea County. Hobbs was in Lea County. I still have that article somewhere among my papers. The money wasn't the primary motivation but the article reinforced my desire to be a teacher and coach. I finished my NEI training and returned to Hobbs where I started organizing scouting activities, recruiting leaders, trying to start new packs and troops, worked with organizations to see about starting Explorer Posts, etc. As I said, it was pretty much all administrative.
In addition to doing my job I was sending out resumes and filling out applications for every school district in eastern New Mexico and west Texas that was within driving distance of Hobbs. I didn't hear anything from any until one morning my phone rang. We were still sleeping when I got a call from the principal at Central Junior High School in Lovington, NM eighteen miles north of Hobbs. He wanted to know if I was still interested in a teaching job and if I was willing to coach basketball. I told him that I definitely was and he scheduled me for an interview later that day.
When I went for the interview it was for a social studies position, my license was for social studies, and for 8th grade boy's basketball. The 9th grade boy's basketball coach was involved in the interview. I mentioned that I knew more about track than basketball and would rather coach track if it was available and I was told in no uncertain terms that the basketball position was their primary concern. It was amazing how fast I decided that maybe I knew something about basketball after all. I talked about my experience coaching in Ruidoso and I was offered the job on the spot. I had no clue about the quality of basketball played by junior high programs in that area.
The negative parts of taking the job were first, telling my boss that I was going to be resigning as District Executive. Needless to say he didn't take it well. He was angry about the money they had invested in my training; and second, I was told that if I was going to teach and coach in Lovington then I couldn't live in Hobbs. That meant selling a brand new home we had only lived in for about six months and finding and buying a house in Lovington.
So the first time I was hired specifically to coach was for 8th grade boy's basketball in Lovington, New Mexico. A long way from where I started as a runner in Southern California. It was the beginning of a long coaching career. I started in Lovington in the 1977-1978 school year.
This was the first team that I coached in Lovington. The 1977-78 8th grade boy's basketball team. Looking back through my notes we finished the season 8-8, 3-6 in the conference. In my notes it said, "The highlight of the season was the victory over Tatum. We were behind the whole game. With 1 second on the clock, Isfrain Gonzales had a 1 and 1. He missed the front end which could have tied it but Daniel Jordan got the rebound and put it in for the win". Obviously I kept detailed records from the very start of my coaching career and it's a good thing because if I had to depend on my memory to share this story, I couldn't do it. An example of my obsessive record keeping are these stats that I still have. Our season total points 791, opponents 806. Our Average points 49.4, opponents 50.3. For the record, the kids knew more about playing and coaching basketball than I did.
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| Summer 1966 |
A requirement for the job was that I attend the National Executive Institute in Mendham, New Jersey for training. The course was several weeks long and covered all areas necessary to be successful as an executive with the BSA.
I remember that we had a lot of classroom time while we were at NEI and we also had a lot of outdoor activity and competition. We lived eight to a cabin and the competitions were held between cabins.
I've often wondered how many, if any of the guys made a career of scouting. There were certainly a lot of positive things about the job and even many things I learned that certainly carried over into my preparation as a coach. The negative part was that there was so much administration involved. So much of the job involved being a politician and selling the program to businesses and organizations.
While I was in New Jersey my wife sent me a new article from the Hobbs News Sun talking about the average salary of teachers in Lea County. Hobbs was in Lea County. I still have that article somewhere among my papers. The money wasn't the primary motivation but the article reinforced my desire to be a teacher and coach. I finished my NEI training and returned to Hobbs where I started organizing scouting activities, recruiting leaders, trying to start new packs and troops, worked with organizations to see about starting Explorer Posts, etc. As I said, it was pretty much all administrative.
In addition to doing my job I was sending out resumes and filling out applications for every school district in eastern New Mexico and west Texas that was within driving distance of Hobbs. I didn't hear anything from any until one morning my phone rang. We were still sleeping when I got a call from the principal at Central Junior High School in Lovington, NM eighteen miles north of Hobbs. He wanted to know if I was still interested in a teaching job and if I was willing to coach basketball. I told him that I definitely was and he scheduled me for an interview later that day.
When I went for the interview it was for a social studies position, my license was for social studies, and for 8th grade boy's basketball. The 9th grade boy's basketball coach was involved in the interview. I mentioned that I knew more about track than basketball and would rather coach track if it was available and I was told in no uncertain terms that the basketball position was their primary concern. It was amazing how fast I decided that maybe I knew something about basketball after all. I talked about my experience coaching in Ruidoso and I was offered the job on the spot. I had no clue about the quality of basketball played by junior high programs in that area.
The negative parts of taking the job were first, telling my boss that I was going to be resigning as District Executive. Needless to say he didn't take it well. He was angry about the money they had invested in my training; and second, I was told that if I was going to teach and coach in Lovington then I couldn't live in Hobbs. That meant selling a brand new home we had only lived in for about six months and finding and buying a house in Lovington.
So the first time I was hired specifically to coach was for 8th grade boy's basketball in Lovington, New Mexico. A long way from where I started as a runner in Southern California. It was the beginning of a long coaching career. I started in Lovington in the 1977-1978 school year.
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Ruidoso, New Mexico
I graduated from California State University at Fullerton in August of 1975. Shortly after that we moved to Ruidoso, New Mexico, a resort town in Southern New Mexico. My wifes parents had moved there and we knew it was a place that we might like to live. We had been there on spring break to ski and fell in love with the place. The plan was for Jackie to get a job in a bank and for me to find a job using my newly acquired Bachelor's degree in sociology. While part one came together quickly, my finding a job using my degree was another matter entirely.
Fortunately I had an electronics background after four years in the Navy and I was able to use that to get a job working for the local cable television company, Cablevision of Lincoln County. It was a very small company with only six total employees and although the pay was initially poor, I was just glad to have a job. I made some good friends there and they helped us get more integrated into the community.
The next thing that happened along my journey to becoming a coach was another of those "accidental" things. I attended a men's breakfast on Wednesday mornings sponsored by the church that we attended. Each week a different member would give a talk to the group after breakfast and before we all left to go to work. On this particular morning the speaker was a teacher and coach from Ruidoso High School, Dub Williams. He spoke about how much he loved teaching and what a rewarding career it was. His talk moved me so much that I went home that night after work and told my wife that I wanted to become a teacher. Coaching still didn't enter the equation at this point, I just knew that I wanted to experience what he had shared that morning at breakfast.
Fortunately I was still eligible for some GI benefits from my service in the Navy and my job was willing to let me come home from school on the weekends and work so we decided that I should try going back to school to get my teacher certification. It involved going to school over 90 minutes from home at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales. My memory isn't good enough to remember details about the decision but obviously the decision was made that I would go back to school.
When it came time for me to do my student teaching I had to fight to be allowed to student teach in Ruidoso so that I could be home with my family and continue to work at Cablevision after school and on weekends. They university finally agreed to allow me to student teach there the fall semester of the 1976-77 school year. While I was doing my student teaching, Williams who was the junior varsity girl's basketball coach told me that he didn't want to coach that season and asked if I was interested. While I didn't know anything about playing let alone coaching basketball the head coach, James Sanchez who was a counselor at the school was willing to give me a chance. Since I was going to be coaching the junior varsity and we practiced with the varsity he felt that it would work out ok.
While I don't have any documentation of my junior varsity team scores I know that we lost more than we won and it was in my role as varsity assistant that I really got to feel what it was like working with a successful program. That year we were District Champions, Regional Runner Up and finished 4th in the State Tournament that was held at ENMU.
My experience working with those athletes convinced me that I wanted to not only teach but coach as well. Fortunately when I completed my student teaching and received my teaching license there was going to be a social studies position opening at the school the 1977-78 school year. Unfortunately when I applied I didn't get it. I applied at other schools close enough that we would be able to continue living in Ruidoso but there were no job openings anywhere.
By the way, a motivator for me taking the job initially was that it paid $300 dollars for the season. I knew after that season that I would like to coach again but I had no idea that coaching would be such a major part of my life for almost 30 years. I still exchange Christmas cards with a member of that team almost 40 years later.
Fortunately I had an electronics background after four years in the Navy and I was able to use that to get a job working for the local cable television company, Cablevision of Lincoln County. It was a very small company with only six total employees and although the pay was initially poor, I was just glad to have a job. I made some good friends there and they helped us get more integrated into the community.
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| This building housed Cablevision of Lincoln County |
Fortunately I was still eligible for some GI benefits from my service in the Navy and my job was willing to let me come home from school on the weekends and work so we decided that I should try going back to school to get my teacher certification. It involved going to school over 90 minutes from home at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales. My memory isn't good enough to remember details about the decision but obviously the decision was made that I would go back to school.
When it came time for me to do my student teaching I had to fight to be allowed to student teach in Ruidoso so that I could be home with my family and continue to work at Cablevision after school and on weekends. They university finally agreed to allow me to student teach there the fall semester of the 1976-77 school year. While I was doing my student teaching, Williams who was the junior varsity girl's basketball coach told me that he didn't want to coach that season and asked if I was interested. While I didn't know anything about playing let alone coaching basketball the head coach, James Sanchez who was a counselor at the school was willing to give me a chance. Since I was going to be coaching the junior varsity and we practiced with the varsity he felt that it would work out ok.
While I don't have any documentation of my junior varsity team scores I know that we lost more than we won and it was in my role as varsity assistant that I really got to feel what it was like working with a successful program. That year we were District Champions, Regional Runner Up and finished 4th in the State Tournament that was held at ENMU.
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| Ruidoso New Mexico 1976-1977 District Champions - Regional Runner Up - 4th at State |
My experience working with those athletes convinced me that I wanted to not only teach but coach as well. Fortunately when I completed my student teaching and received my teaching license there was going to be a social studies position opening at the school the 1977-78 school year. Unfortunately when I applied I didn't get it. I applied at other schools close enough that we would be able to continue living in Ruidoso but there were no job openings anywhere.
By the way, a motivator for me taking the job initially was that it paid $300 dollars for the season. I knew after that season that I would like to coach again but I had no idea that coaching would be such a major part of my life for almost 30 years. I still exchange Christmas cards with a member of that team almost 40 years later.
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| Head Coach James Sanchez - Assistant Coach Dana Anstey |
Monday, March 2, 2015
Why Accidental?
I was actually asked to write a book for track coaches after I coached my first state championship team in 1983 in New Mexico. While I was flattered I knew that I was so early in my career I had neither the expertise nor the experience to write a coaching book. I'm still not sure that I'm "expert" enough to write a book for coaches but I know that I can certainly write well enough to share my coaching story with friends and family. If others see and read this then I hope they enjoy it but it really is for friends and family. I'm also writing it initially as a blog so that people can see it and read it as each part becomes available.
I'm sure there are as many ways to write a memoir as there are memoir writers and I don't plan to follow any "formula". I'm just going to write as the memories come because every time I think about one thing that happened during my coaching career it leads to several additional memories and while I will try to write in a way that makes sense I won't make any guarantees.
Why do I call my coaching career accidental? Here is the background on how I started coaching and turned it into a twenty nine year journey. My coaching experience actually began as a coach of youth sports for teams that my sons were playing on and as a result of my part time job with the Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation Department where I worked at Rimgrove Park in Valinda, California. The park was actually right across the street from where I lived.
I coached baseball and basketball and supervised the football games on the weekend. While I had no official training other than a track and field fundamentals class in junior college before I went into the Navy, I had experience participating in track and cross country in high school and junior college and learned a great deal from my coaches beyond just training methods. I also played adult softball while in the Navy and I was playing for a team sponsored by the company I worked for. I also played and coached coed softball and coed volleyball for teams from Rimgrove. Finally I was playing rugby for the Coyote Rugby Club during the same time period. Everything that I did playing and coaching adult sports and coaching and supervising youth sports helped lay the foundation for my coaching career.
While I was participating in and coaching these sports I wasn't thinking of coaching as a career but I was preparing for it by reading any books that I could find on coaching fundamentals as well as the basics of teaching skills for the sports. While I wasn't an expert in any sense of the word I was becoming more knowledgeable. One of the most important things that I learned during this preparation period was that different sports had more in common than I realized. After you learn the basic rules and fundamentals of a sport the actual coaching fundamentals and principles were the same for any sport, individual or team.
It's surreal now to look back over 40 years and realize that while I didn't know it at the time everything I was doing at this neighborhood part was preparing me to be the coach that I became. Youth sports is where I learned the fundamentals not just of playing the specific sport but the fundamentals of coaching in general. When I was in my final season of coaching in 2005 and I had to deal with a difficult parent it was easier for me to handle because of the difficult parent that I had to remove from the football field and ban from park activities those many years ago.
In 2005 the parent was complaining about the fact that I had removed her daughter from a relay team prior to the regional meet. She was still on another relay and would have a chance to run at the state meet. While it wasn't fun dealing with an irate and unreasonable parent it was simple compared to the first experience I remember as if it was yesterday.
I was in charge of the flag football league at Rimgrove for elementary kids. A young man 8 or 9 was very tentative about contact when he had to block on the line. He was a big boy for his age and would have been able to block fine had he not been so timid. He missed a block that allowed his quarterback to have his flag taken behind the line of scrimmage. The coach who was also this young man's father called time out. He walked to the field, grabbed the young man by the shoulders, turned him to the crowd and began to berate him and humiliate him while he cried. I called the man off to the side and told him that he could not finish coaching the game, had to leave the area and would have to have a hearing to determine his coaching future at the park. Needless to say, he had no coaching future.
My point in sharing this story is just to provide some background for other parent - coach interactions that I may or my not write about in the future. My belief then and now was and is the fact that the child, the athlete, is the most important person in the equation.
My work at Rimgrove provided me with a great deal of experience. I learned about scheduling, organizing tournaments and events, as I mentioned before, dealing with parents as well as athletes of diverse abilities, the importance of communication, the importance of assistant coaches, the difficulties involved in fund raising, field maintenance and management and so much more. The list is endless and while I didn't know it at the time, almost everything I did in my job and as a volunteer at Rimgrove helped prepare me for a career in coaching. I was preparing to be a professional coach long before I knew that I wanted to be a coach. If there is a lesson here it is that you should make the most of every opportunity to learn while you are doing it because you never know what role it might play in your future experiences.
Why accidental? I'll continue down the path of answering that question when I do my next post. There is no short answer but in the effort to not lose your interest I will attempt to be as organized and sequential as possible. No guarantees though.
I'm sure there are as many ways to write a memoir as there are memoir writers and I don't plan to follow any "formula". I'm just going to write as the memories come because every time I think about one thing that happened during my coaching career it leads to several additional memories and while I will try to write in a way that makes sense I won't make any guarantees.
Why do I call my coaching career accidental? Here is the background on how I started coaching and turned it into a twenty nine year journey. My coaching experience actually began as a coach of youth sports for teams that my sons were playing on and as a result of my part time job with the Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation Department where I worked at Rimgrove Park in Valinda, California. The park was actually right across the street from where I lived.
I coached baseball and basketball and supervised the football games on the weekend. While I had no official training other than a track and field fundamentals class in junior college before I went into the Navy, I had experience participating in track and cross country in high school and junior college and learned a great deal from my coaches beyond just training methods. I also played adult softball while in the Navy and I was playing for a team sponsored by the company I worked for. I also played and coached coed softball and coed volleyball for teams from Rimgrove. Finally I was playing rugby for the Coyote Rugby Club during the same time period. Everything that I did playing and coaching adult sports and coaching and supervising youth sports helped lay the foundation for my coaching career.
While I was participating in and coaching these sports I wasn't thinking of coaching as a career but I was preparing for it by reading any books that I could find on coaching fundamentals as well as the basics of teaching skills for the sports. While I wasn't an expert in any sense of the word I was becoming more knowledgeable. One of the most important things that I learned during this preparation period was that different sports had more in common than I realized. After you learn the basic rules and fundamentals of a sport the actual coaching fundamentals and principles were the same for any sport, individual or team.
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| This is where my coaching "career" actually began in 1972. |
In 2005 the parent was complaining about the fact that I had removed her daughter from a relay team prior to the regional meet. She was still on another relay and would have a chance to run at the state meet. While it wasn't fun dealing with an irate and unreasonable parent it was simple compared to the first experience I remember as if it was yesterday.
I was in charge of the flag football league at Rimgrove for elementary kids. A young man 8 or 9 was very tentative about contact when he had to block on the line. He was a big boy for his age and would have been able to block fine had he not been so timid. He missed a block that allowed his quarterback to have his flag taken behind the line of scrimmage. The coach who was also this young man's father called time out. He walked to the field, grabbed the young man by the shoulders, turned him to the crowd and began to berate him and humiliate him while he cried. I called the man off to the side and told him that he could not finish coaching the game, had to leave the area and would have to have a hearing to determine his coaching future at the park. Needless to say, he had no coaching future.
My point in sharing this story is just to provide some background for other parent - coach interactions that I may or my not write about in the future. My belief then and now was and is the fact that the child, the athlete, is the most important person in the equation.
My work at Rimgrove provided me with a great deal of experience. I learned about scheduling, organizing tournaments and events, as I mentioned before, dealing with parents as well as athletes of diverse abilities, the importance of communication, the importance of assistant coaches, the difficulties involved in fund raising, field maintenance and management and so much more. The list is endless and while I didn't know it at the time, almost everything I did in my job and as a volunteer at Rimgrove helped prepare me for a career in coaching. I was preparing to be a professional coach long before I knew that I wanted to be a coach. If there is a lesson here it is that you should make the most of every opportunity to learn while you are doing it because you never know what role it might play in your future experiences.
Why accidental? I'll continue down the path of answering that question when I do my next post. There is no short answer but in the effort to not lose your interest I will attempt to be as organized and sequential as possible. No guarantees though.
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