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PCA Connector
March 1, 2011
David Jacobson, Editor |
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Celebrating the 2011 Sports Ethics Fellows
We at Positive Coaching Alliance and the Institute for International
Sport (IIS) are excited to announce the 2011 Sports Ethics Fellows as part of IIS' 20th-Anniversary edition of National Sportsmanship Day (NSD). As thrilled as we were to be included in IIS' top-20 lists, we also recognize that the people profiled below are making a huge impact on sports and through sports into the rest of society so that youth may benefit. PCA and IIS hope the Sports Ethics Fellows honor provides an even larger platform from which to effect positive change.
Join IIS Executive Director Dan Doyle and me in congratulating them and wishing them further success in their crucial work by commenting on the Life Lessons from the Playing Field blog.-- Jim Thompson, PCA Founder
 Kirk Anderson, Director, Recreational Coaches and Programs, United States Tennis Association
Anderson has published dozens of journal articles and authored USA Tennis 1-2-3 Curriculum for Kids and Coaching Youth Tennis. He also developed the Coaching Youth Tennis online course. In June of 2000, Anderson was a featured speaker at the first ever ITF Tennis Participation Coaches Workshop held in Bath, England. In 2003, he received the International Tennis Hall of Fame Educational Merit Award, and was named Person of the Year by Racquet Sports Industry magazine in 2006.
Anderson's department at USTA provides services and resources to coaches and tennis leaders throughout the country involved with recruiting new players and retaining them in local programs. He is certified by the United States Professional Tennis Association and the Professional Tennis Registry, holds the Master Professional classification from both teaching organizations and is a graduate of the USTA High Performance Coach program.  Shane Battier, NBA's Memphis Grizzlies
Battier is the epitome of PCA's model of the Triple-Impact CompetitorTM, an athlete focused on improving himself, his teammates and the game as a whole. Battier improves himself through intense physical and mental preparation for each opponent, as portrayed in Michael Lewis' The No-Stats All-Star and in Chris Ballard's The Art of a Beautiful Game. He improves his teammates by sacrificing his own statistics for the relatively thankless job of defending the opponent's top scorer; and he improves the sport as a whole through Honoring the Game with an artful approach toward officials. Battier also serves on PCA's National Advisory Board, appearing in PCA's online courses, and promoting the Triple-Impact Competitor Scholarship Program. He is a past recipient of the NCAA Player of the Year Award and won an NCAA Men's Basketball Championship with Duke University.
 Amy and Rob Casta�eda, Founders, Beyond the Ball, Chicago
Rob and Amy Casta�eda could have left Chicago's Little Village neighborhood 10 years ago when gang members set their house on fire and threatened their lives for reporting a crime to the police. Instead, they chose to get more involved in their community. They founded Beyond the Ball, an organization that harnesses the power of sport to help people transform their community.
Beyond the Ball develops youth through a number of sports programs that help change the negative norms present in neighborhoods and replace them with a positive culture, emphasizing teamwork and perseverance through sports and then connecting those values to everyday life, creating a sense of personal social responsibility. The Casta�edas empower community members to change the culture, reclaiming public space for community use by facilitating play and sports activities in areas previously associated with gang violence.
Dr. Jimmy Disch, Associate Professor of Kinesiology, Rice University, Houston
Dr. Disch has been an active participant in sports for more than 50 years. Through his participation in youth, high school, college and recreational sports, he has ardently practiced the principles upon which Positive Coaching Alliance is based: Honoring the Game. Dr. Disch began his coaching career at 16, managing a church league softball team and has coached a variety of sports since then for five to 50-year-old males and females. He learned early on that his passion was for teaching not only the game, but also life lessons.
After receiving his Doctorate from Indiana University, Dr. Disch joined the Rice Faculty in 1973. He coached women's basketball, women's volleyball and men's club volleyball. His primary coaching philosophy was to do what you were asked to do, when you were asked to do it, to the best of your ability every time. If his players did these things he considered it a success regardless of the score. Several of his former players have gone on to be CEOs of major companies or corporations.
Jack Henzes, Head Football Coach and Chairman, Physical Education Department, Dunmore (PA) High School
Henzes in 2010 completed his 50th year as a high school football coach, 40 of them at Dunmore. He is the second-winningest coach in Pennsylvania history; the teams he has head coached have a combined record of 347-150-8. He was a 2009 inductee into the National High School Athletic Coaches Hall of Fame. He has coached 13 All-State players. Tim Ruddy (1989) played at Notre Dame and then with the Miami Dolphins.
A number of Coach Henzes' players have become coaches at the high school, collegiate, and professional levels, including Joe and Tony Marciano (who both served stints as assistant coaches with the Houston Texans) and Vic Fangio, (2010 Stanford University defensive coordinator, now with the San Francisco 49ers). Henzes - who founded a scholarship program to reward academically accomplished players, and who oversaw his teams' volunteerism at the St. Joseph's Festival and in Memorial Day proceedings -- was awarded the Governor Robert P. Casey Medal for a Lifetime of Service.
 Mark Murphy, President and CEO, Green Bay PackersA former all-pro NFL player, trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice and assistant executive director of the NFL Players Association, Mark has made sports organizations better wherever he has been. With the Players Association he worked to strengthen the organization's degree-completion and career-counseling programs. As Colgate's Athletic Director, he started a youth basketball organization and served as its commissioner. Under his leadership as Athletic Director of Northwestern, the school was tied for the top NCAA Graduation Success Rate (98%) in the nation. Since he became CEO of the Packers he has worked to get the team even more involved with the local community. He is involved with Big Brothers Big Sisters and serves as an active member of Positive Coaching Alliance's National Advisory Board.
 Leanna Taylor, Volleyball Coach, Plant High School, Tampa
In Leanna Prida Taylor's seven years as Head Volleyball Coach at Plant, she has led her team to five straight state championships and sent more than 20 players to Division I volleyball programs, all with the entire package of academics, athletics and character. One proud moment was seeing three former Plant players on the same court in the Duke vs. Penn State elite eight match at the 2010 NCAA tournament.Each season, Taylor's team focuses on becoming a fist that cannot be broken. This occurs through intense drills and conditioning, and even more importantly, off-court team-building activities emphasizing humility, poise, and gratitude. Her players volunteer time at the local Child Abuse Council and has won four team GPA awards, produced three Gatorade Players of the Year, six Academic All-Americans, one Dairy Farmers Player of Year Award and five consecutive Kirkwood Character Award Winners. |
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Ask PCA: Injured Players Making the Cut
We received many strong answers to the last "Ask PCA" question about calling line drills by the colloquial name "suicides" for a team of 8-year-olds. To review that question and PCA's answer, you may continue scrolling this item, but for now consider this week's question: Injured Players Making the Cut
I just went through soccer tryouts at my school. On first day, a kid sprained his ankle and was said to be out for two weeks or more. When coach posted varsity spots, there was the kid with the hurt ankle. Is it OK to pick an injured player for a varsity spot over a non-injured player?
-- Name Withheld
Click here to comment on this topic on the "Ask PCA" blog.
Following is the previous "Ask PCA" question and PCA's response:
"My 8-year-old daughter's basketball coach uses the word 'suicides' for line drills. Does that seem right? I am hoping a more positive approach will be used for this drill."
PCA Response by Ray Lokar, PCA Trainer, Los Angeles-Area
 If it were ever appropriate to call running drills "suicides" it is no longer. Too many adolescents have taken their own lives, and your players may know someone who has. Use of that term should be eliminated immediately from every coach's vocabulary.
There are also other good reasons to not label conditioning with such a negative name. In youth sports, especially at the U-10 level, conditioning should be multi-purpose in nature and done with a ball as often as possible. Practice time is so limited that any time spent with the ball is invaluable and running for the sake of running, or even conditioning, is a less productive use of time.
At that age, fun is most important, so instead of drills, coaches should couch skill development as games or competitions. Instead of running as a punishment, players should learn that it's "fun to run," and they should take in their best effort at every challenge. How coaches present these activities, in both name and design, goes a long way toward placing the players in a proper mindset.
Coaches want players to practice hard and focus because it is the right thing to do and, due to a well-planned practice, is impossible NOT to do. Coaches shouldn't want them to practice hard for fear of running. A coach can't stop play in the middle of a game and tell players to "Get on the line for suicides," so coaches must help players learn to gain focus on their own.
A simple reminder or "attitude adjustment" time in practice (sprint up and back, run a lap, etc.) can get players' attention and help them re-focus in practice, but punitive running on a regular basis loses its effectiveness and is counterproductive to achieving the real objective: playing the right way. Running at the end of practice may cause players to "save" themselves by not practicing as hard as they can, which also undermines the players' development.
Finally, if the last thing players do before leaving practice is something they dislike, the coach is developing a negative atmosphere. It is better to end practice on a positive note, and have everyone looking forward to getting back to work at the next practice.
(PCA Trainer Ray Lokar has coached a variety of sports for over 25 years at the youth, high school, and college levels, including his son and two daughters who have gone on to play college athletics, as well as an 8-year old son currently playing youth sports. Ray was the Head Basketball Coach of the 2002 California Interscholastic Federation Champions while at Bishop Amat High School and is a Past-President of the Southern California Interscholastic Basketball Coaches Association. Click here for his basketball coaching DVDs filled with PCA techniques.)
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Get a Piece of the $65,000 to Be Awarded May 31
 The Liberty Mutual Responsible Sports Community Grant period is now open! Until May 31, you can help your team or league earn one of the $2,500 youth sports organization grants or $5,000 school sports grants to be awarded this spring.Individuals who complete the Responsible Coach and Responsible Sports Parent online guides "powered by Positive Coaching Alliance" earn points for their school or organization.
While completing those online guides, you and your youth sports community learn from some of the high-quality, practical tools you have come to expect from PCA. You also will see video of coaches putting PCA and Responsible Sports principles into practice.
Use the grant money for things like improving coaches' education, PCA partnerships, workshops, upgrading local field conditions and more!
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A Closing Thought on National Sportsmanship Day
 The Sports Ethics Fellows we name in conjunction with Institute for International Sport (IIS) on the Institute's National Sportsmanship Day live their creed every day. Sportsmanship, or "Honoring the Game" as we say at PCA, is part of who they are. One of our 2010 Fellows, Steve Stanford, is making an additional effort as immediate past president of Tampa's Palma Ceia Little League. Here is an excerpt from his e-mail encouraging celebration of National Sportsmanship Day.Palma Ceia Parents, Managers and Coaches,
National Sportsmanship Day is March 1, 2011. To observe this special day, Palma Ceia Little League is asking coaches and volunteers to make a special commitment to encourage sportsmanship with your teams all week. Here are a few examples of how you can promote sportsmanship on your teams:
Teach all players the Little League Pledge...
The post-game ritual at PCLL has always included all team members and coaches proceeding from 1st to 3rd and 3rd to 1st and letting the other team know that you appreciate them. This is something that needs to be taught to the kids - a good handshake, high-five, or fist-bump with good eye contact and a respectful appreciation of the other team (win or lose).
On the Friday and Saturday games, volunteers are encouraged use the audio system to call the players to the lines, play the National Anthem and recite the Little League pledge and let the parents know we're doing it in observance of National Sportsmanship Day....
Sports Always,
Steve Stanford
Immediate Past President |
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