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High School Coaches Club: Newsletter #65

A service project you could start right away

A lot of coaches have verbalized the concept that, if all we’ve done by the time a player graduates is helped them become a better athlete, then we’ve really missed the boat. Not all of our kids will go on to play college athletics, let alone get paid to play a sport (and even if they do, that eventually comes to an end), but all of our student-athletes will be human for the rest of their lives.

One of the best ways to help these young people is to give them the gift of perspective. Granted, some of them come from really rough home lives, but by participating in service projects, we help them see that either: A) They don’t have it nearly as bad as they think they do, or B) Others are going through struggles, too, and helping them can help us grasp the power of accepting a helping hand.

We are starting a service project for our spring season this week (tomorrow, actually). It’s super simple, and something you could implement with your program with very little effort.

We’re collecting boxes of diapers and wipes for families who could use a helping hand. For any of you who’ve had children, you know first hand how much money you burn through on dipes and wipes. It’s crazy! So here’s all you need to do: set up a collection site and urge your team’s fans (and opposing teams, too) to bring a box to any home game.

Then, at the end of the diaper drive, you and your student-athletes deliver them to whatever organization you deem fit. The players help by getting information out to the community, collecting donations, and learning how a relatively simple task can have a profound impact for those on the receiving end.

We started the season 0-5

By the time you open this up Wednesday morning, we’ll either be 1-5 or 0-6. I’ve never been on this side of a record like that. There are plenty of reasons that contribute to a tough start like this, and our schedule certainly isn’t going to get easier as the season continues. I’ve decided to bring all of you along for the ride, not only so you can learn (either through our triumphs or mistakes) from us in case you’re ever in a similar position.

In the pre-season, we discussed with our players the idea of Quitters, Campers, and Climbers. And our team mantra since I took over the program in 2017 has been #LiftWhenYouClimb, and like many programs, we’ve preached the one-step-at-a-time mentality that’s so easy in thought but difficult in practice.

One of my assistant coaches, Patrick Frost, came up with the idea to rephrase our season, starting this week, as a climb. As I’m typing this, we’re ranked 51 out of 51 teams in the largest classification (6A) in Oregon. We have a big mountain in front of us. It’s time to start climbing.

So at the start of our first practice this week, Coach Frost introduced the concept. We ordered up a handful of team-color bracelets with “Keep Climbing” etched into them, and we’ll distribute those to players when they arrive next week.

We also increased the intensity of our practices, timed everything (including simple transitions from one concept to the next), and focused our practices around the team and individual components of the game that we need to improve the fastest if we want to start finding the win column.

I’ll let you know how it goes, and will update you weekly along the way. In the meantime, if you’ve ever been on a similar rough start to season, what worked (or didn’t work) for your program? Click reply and let me know!

An episode you need to hear:

Ron Kretz
Harlandale High School (TX)
High School Coaches Club: Episode 48

A longtime baseball and football coach in Texas, Ron Kretz joins the Club to share many of the lessons he learned along the way, from how his first head coaching gig involved a barbed wire fence, to how he helped parents see the game through a coach's eyes. He now serves as an assistant principal while also offering tons of resources to high school baseball coaches at kretzfiles.com.

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As Coach Lee would say, “Lovin’ You,”
Max Price