[CaptainCrunch]

So I thought I would switch gears with some thoughts, especially after day two of our tryouts.

So last night I wanted to spend a bit of time afterwords talking to coaches on the other team and even our coaches.

We as coaches sometimes get tied up in things like systems and winning and scoring points or stopping other teams from scoring points.

So the discussion I had last night so we could refocus a bit is why are we coaching, what's our core motivation for coaching.

Is creating a winning program the end all and be all? Don't get me wrong, winning is always important. The organization that I'm with is in a elite level league and both Cowboys teams are always very competitive.

So talking to our coaches we talked about why we're here and we came up with some interesting answers that I think we can apply to our coaching styles

1) We want to make these kids better citizens, we want to teach them to respect and be respected. To be able to take any situation and apply what they've learned in sports and be able to apply it to their life or school or whatever

2) getting the kids active and involved. The term getting them off of the streets is a term that's used a lot and it valid. Getting them around other kids and helping them to connect in a team environment and start building a positive support system.

3) Whats our goal. We have a lot of players that come through that are elite for their level and are going to get looks from CIS schools for example. So how do we take the kids that have never played football before and give them the tools to play the game. How do we take the poor players and make them average, the average players and make them stars and take the Stars and make them elite.

4) How do we make the game fun and make the kids fall in love with the game, while at the same time progressing as coaches. The old school mentality is still there, the hyper competitive I demand perfection coach with the coaching intimidation factor is actually chasing players away from the game. It doesn't work. What do we as coaches need to do and learn and share to become both effective teachers and effective communicators in practice and on game day.

5) Player safety and how do we start winning the public relations battle. We can all agree that concussion news and movies like Concussion didn't help contact sports. So how can we teach players to play safely while still being effective. How do we show that as custodians of a parents kid and of the sport start reducing injuries and reducing concussions. As coaches now we all have to have safe contact certification. However we need to teach it at every practice and drill it and become effective. So we have to make sure that all of the coaches have bought in, there are still too many put your helmet in their chest coaches in football. To combat that as coaches we have to sell those old school coaches in terms of the benefits of safe contact and heads out play, at the same time we can't tolerate coaches that don't teach it.


So the other thing and its briefer. We talked about coaching relationships. Kids are like sponges they pick up everything that's negative. So if coaches can't get along player will pick that up.

As an OC I have a staff that reports to me. My job is to design the scheme, create the game plan and make sure its executed. however last year I was a bit of a tyrant on that because it was my first year running an offense and I didn't want to fail. So I told the coaches the how and why of position coaching and because of that for a while, the position coaches bristled.

In this day and age even if your a head coach or a coordinator or whatever, you have to be collaborative you have to leverage their knowledge, but at the same time you have to be able to know when to put your foot in the dirt and not budge.

So and for example. On day one of tryouts I decided to work with running backs. I prepared a list of what I wanted to do and I basically monopolized the individual skills time in practice. But I made sure that I asked the position coaches for feed back first. Last night I went to the position coach and said, I had my time yesterday, I'm here to assist you and learn what you like to do. This time is yours.

The last point with coaches, is how can you make it fun for coaches. We're all volunteers we don't do this for money, so how can we make this enjoyable.

The responses that came back from my assistants were enlightening.

First of all be creative. In football we're seeing a lot of stagnation in terms of most coaches run 5 or 6 plays that work for them and they drill it over and over again. Coaches and players get bored. I worked with my coaches with a goal that every week we'd try something new and they came back with some pretty fun stuff.

We worked with the kids on our bread and butter but we also inserted. So we went from a team that went from just running a I formation, to a Ace formation power, to having unbalanced receivers to running a trips bunch spread to running a pistol Wishbone. And the coaches challenge was how can we adopt our bread and butter in all of these formations. The coaches and the players really enjoyed the challenge, but it got the coaches to flex their creative muscles, feel more involved and take some owners ship.

Oh and last, don't be afraid to give coaches more responsibilities. We talked about letting each position coach take one game at the Jamboree to be the "offensive coordinator" and make calls and decisions. I let coaches make calls in practice as well and we talked about each coach letting me know what they want to see in practice games or scrimmages.

Just my 2 cents