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Positive Coaching Alliance Connector
August 25, 2010
David Jacobson, Editor |
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Coaching Tip: Opening Ritual at Practice
As a youth or high school sports coach, you need every tool available to capture and maintain the focus of your athletes. Entering your practice, they may already have had a day filled with school, errands, socializing, family life, video games and cell phones.
Therefore, it is important to provide your athletes a conscious transition into your practice environment. One way to do so is through an opening team ritual. Click on the screen image above for video from the Liberty Mutual Responsible Sports Program Powered by Positive Coaching Alliance, featuring the opening ritual of Kim Oden, a 2003 recipient of PCA's national Double-Goal Coach� Award.
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Ask PCA: Improving Our Organization's Officiating
Your answers to our most recent "Ask PCA" question about coaches saving spots for players who miss tryouts provided some great guidelines and kept the focus on the life lessons attached to a player's level of commitment. To review that question and PCA's answer, you can continue scrolling through this item, but for now, consider this week's question:
Improving Our Organization's Officiating
"Officials for our youth sports organization are all volunteer parents and coaches. The league provides a day-long training seminar before each season, but the levels of competence and consistency are as low as you might expect from parents with little or no officiating experience. Any thoughts on how to improve officiating without drastically increasing our registration costs?
-- Ron Whittaker, Alameda, CA Following is the previous "Ask PCA" question and PCA's response: "I'm wondering about High School coaches who 'hold' spots for students who couldn't be at tryouts. What do you think of this practice? Are there state or local school districts with policies on this topic?"
PCA Response by Eric Eisendrath, Lead Trainer-New York
While I am unfamiliar with any state or school district policies concerning holding spots, I can give you my opinion. Speaking as a coach and also as an athlete who missed tryouts due to an unavoidable situation many years ago, I do not think athletes should be punished, or lose out on the opportunity to play, if they have unavoidable schedule conflicts or injuries that prevent them from participating in tryouts.
It is up to coaches to create an atmosphere that rewards and validates commitment. In that vein, I agree with those commenting on our blog who suggest accommodations for athletes who miss tryouts because of their pre-existing commitment to a practice for game for a current season's sport.
Coaches should clearly state their tryout policies in advance, including the acceptable reasons, if any, for a missed tryout, and the consequences for missing tryouts. Then, those rules must apply equally to all athletes.
This approach maintains fairness to all the prospective members of a team and creates a framework for athletes and their families to consider life lessons in commitment and time management.
Read all the Ask PCA blog comments on this question.
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In Memoriam: Scotty Zornes, Double-Goal Coach
PCA mourns the tragic death of Scotty Zornes, 26, a 2010 winner of PCA's national Double-Goal Coach Award Presented by Liberty Mutual Insurance. Scotty was one of three coaches who led Houston's West University Little League to the 2009 Little League Senior League Baseball World Series championship. That experience so affected him that he decided to pursue coaching as a profession and landed an internship with the University of Alabama football coaching staff. Scotty died in an automobile accident outside Tuscaloosa, Ala. on Sunday, August 15, according to the West University Examiner. The family is asking that contributions be made in his name to the Scotty Zornes Memorial Fund of West U Little League, P.O. Box 25053, Houston, TX 77265.
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Become a PCA Member
PCA is in the midst of its annual membership drive, which this year offers an exciting new set of benefits, including free access to PCA's new online courses, quarterly members-only webinars with PCA National Advisory Board members, a Nike "Honor the Game" T-shirt, a Shutterfly Photobook and access to a special online video, featuring PCA National Advisory Board Members Phil Jackson and Doc Rivers.
Join before August 31 and receive these special benefits while also helping to make PCA's important work possible.
To strengthen the ever-growing PCA Movement, we hope to double our membership base through this campaign. As a non-profit committed to transforming youth sports so that all athletes through high school age can benefit from the life lessons that are uniquely available through sports, PCA needs your help!
To become a PCA Member or renew your membership, click here.
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