Family Memory (XLIV): The Graveyard

It isn’t really my story…it’s from the mid-1950s, actually. Near my grandparents’ house in Keokuk (18th and Palean), you have the Keokuk National Cemetery for veterans, etc, along with ‘normal’ graves (it is where my grandparents and Uncle Mike are now buried). Almost all cemeteries have burial plots for coffins placed into the ground. You’ve got others who are placed into above-ground mausoleums, sometimes built big enough to hold entire families. And then in some places, you get crypts–burial chambers underground.

Because Keokuk’s cemetery was full of rolling hills and swells, it has quite a few of these on its grounds. Once occupied, these were locked and secured, but if they had been built but did not yet have occupants, they were left open. After all, there’s nothing to steal in an empty vault, so why waste the effort?

They didn’t really think about kids, though. In summer, like most places before 1985 or so, when school was out, kids were turned loose to ride bikes and run around the neighborhood playing, adventuring, and getting into trouble from time to time–sometimes trouble that required parents to get involved…sometimes trouble that kids handled themselves, and sometimes trouble that couldn’t get handled…and remained to become a story years later.

It was before Uncle Mike was born, so most likely, Summer 1955 or 1956 (Uncle Mike comes into the picture, September, 1956). Uncle Karl would have been 10-11, Uncle Helmut 8-9, and my mom 9-10. They went to the cemetery running around–a great place for it since it was so wide open and on most days, there was no one around (they knew enough to not play there if there were funerals or services going on). They were playing tag, the usual sort of stuff when they found a newly built crypt with its entrance swinging open, permitting just a tiny bit of light into the blackness.

My mom never backed down from a dare, certainly not from her brothers. She was also fearless about going first–anything a boy could do, she could do. I’d love to say my uncles were always noble at heart, but….no. They’d talk her into doing stuff to see what would happen or to get her in trouble. In this case, Uncle Karl wanted to pull a prank, so he dared my mom to go first into the crypt.

No biggie–Mom did but as soon as she did, Uncle Karl closed the door behind her, trapping her in complete blackness. The intent was to do this only for a minute or so, but it turned out that the door wasn’t mounted flush/square, so that Uncle Karl couldn’t get it back open immediately. Instead, it wound up taking both boys several minutes to yank the crypt door open and let my mom out.

That’s the story.

Nowhere in it is there anything about my mom slugging either brother. There’s nothing about her running home to tell Grandma (who would’ve told Papa…and THEN there’d be trouble). All that remained was a story and when it got told, my mom referring to her brothers, “You were shits, both of you.”

What I take from that is that kids are resilient. They know when things are a joke and when things don’t go quite right, too. They don’t always have to get even, retaliate. Did my mom do stuff to them? You betcha. But in the end–it was all okay because it was family. If it had been a couple boys from school doing that to her, I also know my uncles would have been first and second in line to dish out some lumps to the offenders.

So many stories, so many lost to time that I’ve been told and forgotten. I love my family so damned much.

Thoughts on Fixing the Officials Shortage

So, I wrote something recently on the problem with refereeing and the shortage of officials across sports and in one forum, a gentleman named Derek D. had a comment, basically, “Yeah–but what are the solutions?” I appreciate that because it is easy to complain and solutions aren’t always easy to find. I was working on this already–but wanted to give Derek a shout-out because he’s right. If you’re gonna complain, you have an obligation to work on solutions.

Fixes for officiating shortages:

• Change registration fees. Instead of paying money up front, associations could charge a ‘tax’–and take $1-2 from every match. Doing this would make it easy to register as an official.
  • Unfair to refs working all the time? Cap the tax at $100.
  • Unfair to refs? Charge a $1 ‘service fee’ to every match a tournament holds and make the host pay it then eliminate registration fees for officials.
  • You could make the ‘tax’ function only for officials in the first three years of doing it…this way they could see what they think before committing thoroughly.
• One organization/clearinghouse to handle all officials’ paperwork.
  • (This will never happen–but it would make life easier on new officials)
• Bonus pay/honors for officials who recruit new officials…extra bonus for people under 30.
  • Make it that once that new ref has worked ‘X’ # of matches, the official who recruited the newbie gets paid up one rank per match for the rest of the season.
    • Make it so the recruiter gets $1/match of the recruited ref’s pay as a finder fee. This means if I could recruit 3-4 refs to stick with the sport…I could bank some money!!…and not be hurting people.
• Referee assigners cannot remain in a job more than three years. It has to rotate.
• Referees should not have to work matches for free in order to be evaluated/receive promotion. This is indentured servitude.
  • You could make registration fees higher for promoted ranks. After all, pay is higher for those ranks already.
• For VB, ‘OPEN’ matches get an R1/2. ‘NATIONAL’ gets an R1. Lower levels–coaches officiate. –this helps the VB ref squeeze currently, but it isn’t a long-term viable solultion.
• If an official has to work a match before 9am or after 9pm, they should be comped housing/per diem as part of their pay.
  • This is for soccer, baseball, softball. With baseball/softball, some facilities schedule games to begin at *1AM* or *5AM*. Unacceptable.
• Standardized apparel across NFHSA / AAU / relevant travel-ball organizations
• Create reciprocal registration agreements between state associations. EX: If I register as a ref in Illinois, I can work contests in any adjacent state.
• VB only: Make USAV use NFHSA VB rules–or vice-versa. There should be one rules system to rule them all.
• Evaluations should be based on ‘did they get the calls right’ rather than ‘you need to have your arm bent an extra 15° when beckoning for a serve.’
• Governing bodies NEED to put the hammer down on spectators abusing officials.
• Governing bodies NEED to put the hammer down on coaches abusing officials.
  • A youth coach getting ejected from a contest (after a review) should be suspended for one month. Two ejections in a two-year span means suspension for a year.
  • Why not fine teams with abusive parents?
    • Create a national listing of incidents–list the travel-ball team and whether it was their athletes, staff, or fans.
• Increase the pay.
  • Many sports’ officials, after expenses, would make more money walking the floor at Menard’s or being on the counter at McDonald’s than they get from officiating a game.
• Aggressively go after the Old Boys Network with assigning.
• Have officials with less than 3-4 years experience wear something obvious that denotes them as ‘apprentice referee’. Increase penalties for coaches/fans who are abusive towards inexperienced officials.
• Eliminate the need for shirts with branding on them or available from limited sources. Let officials purchase simple, plain white polos (or egg blue or prison gray) instead of overpaying for shirts with embroidery saying “Official” or such on the side.
• Require tournament hosts to station a staff member at each court to deal with fans.
• Make sure officials are supported/have the authority to deal with unsportsmanlike fans.
  • Start awarding points to the other team
  • Force the coach of the offending team to leave the bench and stand by the parent. The coach is not permitted to sub or say anything while with that parent–the players are on their own.

Speaking of problems–you should follow this link. It’s a real thing and more important than officiating: Whistles.

Family Memory (XLIII): Escape to Colditz

Back when Erick was 18, he was an exchange student in Poland. Towards the end of his year abroad, I went to visit him in Bydgoszcz. It was my first time in Europe and I made it a ‘business trip’/expense by visiting my production manager in Bad Nauheim first. From there, I took the train to Erick (through the hell that is Poznan’s train station). I got to see quite a bit of the area thanks to his host parents and then he and I went to Gdansk and saw the history there.

After that, we took one other trip. This was into eastern Germany–Saxony, and a historical place that I’ve always wanted to see…and Erick did, too. This was the town of Colditz, home to the escape-proof POW camp Oflag IV-C, right in the castle overlooking the town.

–If you don’t know the story of Colditz as a POW camp, go look it up. Read Reid’s memoir of his time there (before he escaped), play the boardgame Escape from Colditz…and if you’re old enough, be aware Colditz was a primary inspiration for the old CBS TV show ‘Hogan’s Heroes’.

We got on the train and suffered delays. Most of these were the fault of Polish rails. It meant that we did not arrive at our final rail depot on time. We were hours late, so it was 1600-1700 when we got there. It was definitely after bus service was done for the day…and that was a problem because we weren’t in Colditz. We were about 10 kilometers west, outside the town of Bad Lausick.

There was no Uber and no taxis. We could’ve hitchhiked, I suppose–but my spoken German isn’t great and Erick didn’t know any–only Polish and that would’ve meant waiting for cars to go past AND have them willing to stop and pick up two big guys over 185cm…so that wasn’t gonna happen.

So we did what a lot of Europeans would do in a situation like that. We walked a couple blocks to the small grocery store. We bought a litre of lemonade and 500g of sausage, stuck those in a backpack, and we started walking towards Colditz. He was in great shape, I was in good–so walking 10k was just a matter of time, right?

Yup. Of course, it was mostly uphill. Still not a problem, but what makes it really memorable, I swear every sign we saw said “COLDITZ – 10km”. We were walking and the signs said we weren’t getting closer. This was amusing because both of us know how to navigate using the sun, etc–so we knew we WERE going in the right direction…and eventually we reached a hilltop where we could see the castle…it was still 6-7km away, but all was good.

We got to town, found out there was a single place to stay with limited rooms (we got one–lucky as starting the next night, they were having a big British history group in and had no rooms for a week after). We dropped our stuff in our room (part of a guy’s house, really), went and had a big dinner, then came back and relaxed until we could go to the castle in the morning.

In the morning, it turns out we were the only tourists in town–so that Erick and I got a private tour of the castle. It was in worse shape than I thought it would be physically–but that’s because Colditz was in East Germany and the communists/Soviets took care of very little. When we were there, work was underway slowly, gradually, to repair various portions of the castle.

What an amazing place. The courtyard was stone and rock–it’s also where prisoners played a version of rugby.

From the courtyard, there were no outside vies–only tall walls…and there was only a limited amount of sun–so quite a few POWs spent time moving from sunny area to sunny area during spring and summer.

We got to see the theatre where they dug one of their tunnels…though my favorite tunnel was in the chapel–where they started it atop the belltower…because no one would start a tunnel from a place like that.

They did a lot of plays from that stage–quite a few with 20+ cast members. Of course, you’re a POW, so boredom comes easily–being in a play was mental and physical exercise, not to mention a semblance of fun (and cover for potential escapers)

The chapel was really permitted to go to crap under the Soviets–it was the focal point for restoration when we were there.

Behind the pulpit you see–that’s where the POWs hid their radio and got their news from the BBC. The German guards just figured the clergy member there was devout, kneeling in prayer. What you can’t see in this photo is on the top level–the names of all the local men killed in World War One are memorialized in the wall.

When we were done, we ate lunch, hopped on a bus–with all the kids done with kindergarten for the day (in Europe, kids travel without parents regularly). We made it to the train and headed back to Bydgoszcz. We didn’t make it without a Poznan Train Station experience…but that’s a story for a different day.

I Get Why There’s a Shortage of Referees

You know, across sports, people talk about the shortage of referees. I get that. So–my logic was, I’ll become a ref. Easy-peasy. I’ve done it in club in my region as a coach for 20 years, did JH/HS a couple years in the ’90s, and have coached high-level VB for 30+ years.

And then reality set in. There may be a shortage, but the powers-that-be aren’t really interested in solving the issues.

#1: We need younger officials. Why aren’t there younger officials.

• Cost. To officiate for schools, you’ll need black slacks and all black shoes. There’s $130 or so. You have to PAY to register with a state institution. That’s $85 more…then you have to buy the specific three colored shirts–$30 each, another $90. That’s $305 and the person hasn’t been paid yet. Do you know many 21-30 year olds who have $300 sitting around to sink into the paperwork of a job they haven’t been paid for yet (and won’t pay THAT much anyways)?…now think about the gear a baseball/softball ump has to have…
• Paperwork. USAV, AAU, NFHSA…three different registrations (you’ll actually pay for all of them, so keep adding to that $300 above…)–and wait, wanna do college? Now you’ve got to do PAVO. Now you have to apply for each, go through a number of steps, authorize the background checks (because they are ALL separate) and then, you get to try and figure out how to find places to ref–because you’re not going to get effective hints from the governing bodies.

So–you’re 23-24. Are you going to do all this? For school ball, you’re giving up your weeknights after working a day job. Those club gigs–they’re taking away your weekend (social life). Or think of the other sports–it’s not different. Why am I doing this to make my $60 umping or run up and down a court to be screamed at by parents in the stands of AAU basketball? You may not like the younger generation and complain about them–but they aren’t dumb and so this deters them from officiating.

#2: The Old Boys Network

This is alive and well. For basketball (recently if not currently), assignors keep the good jobs for themselves and their friends. Newer, younger refs, ones who aren’t in that drinking buddy circle, they’re going to get the Jr High games of Smellypits Tech vs. Sister Mary for the Blind. At a former school, the bball coach talked about a 22yo ref who played in college, spent time at HS summer tourneys reffing to get better–that he was spectacular, but couldn’t get assignments for anything other than college JV vs. juco games, so he stopped reffing. He moved to a different part of the country and started reffing again–and suddenly was getting assigned bigger/better games, the better he did, the better his assignments…and he’s now on ESPN regularly as an official working D1 games.

This goes on with other sports and absolutely goes on within volleyball. I’ve been told I need to hang out with an assignor/go drinking after working a club tourney if I want to be given college matches. I’ve been told that it doesn’t matter if I am good or not, “you have to pay your dues” and accept bad matches, travel to matches at places far away/no one else wants to do and that “after four or five years, then you’ll start getting better assignments.” –Does that sound appealing? Edited in: I’ve also been told that I’ll need to make sure to be available last-minute as a ‘sub official’ so that I curry favor with assignors.

To be fair–I understand getting seen enough to know if someone’s competent. 4-5 years to figure that out? No, sorry. When recruiting, I can tell within 10 minutes if a kid’s got skills and what level they are appropriate for. As a coach, I knew within 10 points of watching an official if they were going to be solid or not regardless of how old they were or their years as a ref. Why do officials evaluators need ‘four or five years’ to permit someone to get a ‘better assignment’?

There’s also the reverse of this–swhy do bad officials get multiple games then? You’ve had the 4-5 years to evaluate…yet they get regular work and non-sucky contests. Simple answer and you know it, too: It’s not what you know–it’s who you know.

And be available on a couple hours’ notice to sub? Life exists, planning is required. I don’t know many people willing to sit by a phone waiting for a call like that–or willing to disrupt their personal or work lives to do this.

#3: There’s a Shortage?

Is there? I’ve been to one club location where they’ve been stretched thin/can’t always get enough officials, but with others officials received scheduled breaks one to three times throughout the day. With a couple tourneys, I reached out and was specifically told in one case “Thanks, but we have more than enough.” Good–but then don’t post on your social media regularly, reposting calls for officials/that there are shortages!

#4: The Left and Right Hands don’t cooperate

The IHSA here tells new officials that they should contact assignors regarding availability….the problem is, there are no VB assignors south of Champaign or outside the St. Louis east metro area–but they don’t tell you then that you have to contact school athletic directors directly OR how to contact them/find their email addresses. And when you do that–you’ll get told sometimes “We use an assigner. Contact _____________.” Reasonable answer–though that assigner isn’t on the state list. You’ve also just wasted time contacting that AD as one of several hundred emails to schools that you thought weren’t using assigners!

It’s no different with college. With college officiating, I had one assigner tell me that I can’t be assigned until I’m a PAVO member. A different one said not to waste money registering with PAVO until July when it becomes a ‘new year’ (because memberships expire then and paying before that point is useless since there are no matches MAY-JUL)–and that that will be fine and I can get scheduled as long as I acknowledge I’ll need to join PAVO/go to a clinic before the season starts and another said PAVO’s just recommended if you’re only planning to do NJCAA matches

Which is it? I dunno. 30+ years in volleyball and all I know from it is: it can’t be all three.

Does all this make you excited to officiate and go thru the process? And if you’re thinking about volleyball, think about baseball and softball…because those officials get paid way less per hour than a VB ref *AND* get assigned some outrageous hours–you know, like games starting at 6am or 1130pm. Wheeeee!!!!

You can ‘be’ or you can ‘do’

Social media bombs us with all sorts of stuff that looks like it MAY be relevant or important, but rarely is. That feeds our biases–so that it becomes rarer and rarer for individuals to click on/read articles that don’t fit their pre-disposed beliefs or interests.

If it concerns volleyball–it’s going to get more attention if the title is something like “Great Drills for Winning” or maybe something more risqué such as “Here’s how to keep parents in line,” so that if a topic heading doesn’t sound controversial, they don’t read it. I see this from the clicks on what I write, too. It also means this is one of those ‘boring’ ones, doesn’t it? It is the third post about the philosophy of John Boyd: John Boyd, Iconoclasm, and the OODA Loop and then People, Ideas, Hardware in that Order.

Boyd was brilliant enough that he could’ve risen to lead the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but, you see, Boyd had a problem–he had little tolerance for bullshit of any sort, whether that was paperwork or ladder-climbers. When you don’t kiss ass, you don’t climb up the prestige ladder and there’s only so far you can go on competence/expertise (you may glean insight here why I like Boyd and his best chronicler, Ian Boyd) and no held from the Old Boys Network.

Boyd had this pointed out to him repeatedly–that if he would just go along, he’d be rapidly promoted to prestigious ranks. Boyd’s response was always, “You can be or you can do.” (with minor variations) You see this in every field–but since I write about coaching…

How many coaches spend their time making ‘recruiting connections’ with other coaches rather than spending time within their own program developing young people? How many club coaches position themselves as ‘recruiting coordinators’ so they can schmooze college coaches (or tell a parent “I talked with John Cook/Kevin Hambly/Christy Johnson”)–hoping to land a NCAA D-1 gig (or pickup another $5k in club fees) rather than do educational sessions or provide other aid to the 12-500 kids playing in the club that employs them but aren’t D-1 athletes?

Look at Nick Saban as an example…climbing the ladder, he changed jobs in 1975, 1977, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1994, 1999, 2004, 2006…the only time he stayed in one place more than five years was the TENTH job of his career. To be fair to Saban–he’s far from alone in this climb. Lou Holtz stayed more than five years only twice. Now look at the volleyball churn–~10% of positions changed in 2023-24, ~15% the year before, ~20% the year before that…so more than 40% over three years. Oof.

This is what Boyd disliked–the constant movement for the sake of a better title and/or prestige. This was ‘to be’–where you introduce yourself with a title and an institution–something like HEAD coach, Alabama Football (since I’ve used Saban already–I use it here, not because he did this). In the military, this would be “I’m GENERAL Smith, in charge of the 1st Division”…oooooohhhh!!!! Boyd had nothing against promotion or higher pay–but he wanted it to be for merit, potential, and how you execute your current job rather than who you know or grease the wheels…[Boyd despised the Old Boys Network in the military–reading this, you can name the places in sport where the OBN is in control even today.]

So–having read this, have you self-evaluated? Does this describe you and what you do?

Boyd always recommended ‘doing’. You focus on self-improvement, you work on testing new ideas, collaborating with others to improve equipment, technique, and ideas. If something can be improved–you have a moral responsibility to suggest that improvement to your superior even if the superior prefers the previous way of doing something. You have a moral imperative to mentor and educate younger officers/enlisted personnel (translation assistants/players).

Again, how many coaches refuse to change from the way they were taught to do something circa 1996? (See–this is relevant to better coaching) Do you coach differently today than you did 10 years ago? Have you changed verbal cues, how you run a practice? Do you sub differently or use timeouts in a different way? Or do you stick with what you know?

And this leads to the big deal–you working to improve leads to helping others…in the case of most volleyball coaches, that means helping young people. You can judge for yourself if you’re doing that–or areas where you can. Examples:

• Can you help a kid hit harder? Set more consistently? Pass decently?
• Can you help make that 12yo a better leader? A better follower?
  • Does that 12yo get better year after year?
• Are you teaching the sport’s rules?
• Are you helping young people learn to be good winners AND losers?
• Do you teach that the sport is dynamic and always changing?–that we as coaches and players must change as well?
• Do you teach the parents–so that they can help the kids, too…because parents are critical for adolescent development, not to mention with recruiting.
• Do you help other coaches grow more skilled/become better coaches?
• Do you mentor?
  • Do you have a mentor?

I’m not pointing fingers–not hardly, because I’m not 28 any more. You pass age 45, maybe 50, and it becomes easy to stick with what you know…the saw about old dogs/new tricks isn’t far from the mark. It takes work. Lots of work. There are times I struggle with being vs. doing whether it within volleyball, running a 501-c-3, or in my personal life. It’s pretty comfortable to have a routine. It’s comfortable to know you have a reputation, that what you do already WILL lead to a measure of success.

Reading Boyd–and you can guess having read this…it made me more comfortable with having a ‘do’ attitude. It’s a constant personal struggle–because we WANT to be recognized, feel important (it’s natural) to other people…it’s so easy to let that replace doing the work that matters.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading–a little long, a little rambly this morning.

Iowa State: May 1988, Mayan, dry ice and Max’s shower

May 1988 was curious in Ames. Me, Brian, Paul, and Jeff (who was from Haber) skipped VEISHEA and headed to Chicago to watch three games at Wrigley Field, Cubs and Giants…which was a great time. When we got back, it turned out we’d missed the first (stupid) VEISHEA riot…which led to a second riot in 1991 and eventually the end of the century-long tradition in 2014 (of note with that first riot…everyone arrested was from out-of-town and wasn’t an ISU person).

ASIDE: The whole out-of-town thing has continued…when you see rioting, inevitably it is people from out of town who start it. Locals are rarely involved in destroying their own towns (there are exceptions). This sort of thing also ended celebrations and special events at a number of other colleges/universities at the end of the 20th century.

So, the following week was ‘Dead Week’, a week where everyone’s supposed to be quiet, where professors don’t issue assignments, and students prepare for Finals. Back in the ’80s, that was necessary for quite a few classes, engineering/science or otherwise. I mean, I had a final once that began with “Explain FDR’s rationale for opening relations with the Soviet Union, taking into account social, economic, and international political factors.” That was the FIRST of three essay questions…damn, Kottman was my idol!!!

But on Foster, we tended to stay loose, regardless. Why would Dead Week be any different? Well, we had one guy on the floor named Mayan. He was a Physics guy. And since VEISHEA was about showing off campus, departments went all out with demonstrations–Home Ec was famous for cherry pies, the arts people did a bunch of music stuff, and Physics…well, they liked experiments. And when it was all done, there were always leftovers.

One of the things I remember from Physics 101 and the prof, a guy named Dr. Hill, was a comment he made one day that liquid nitrogen was cheaper than gasoline. He dumped a bunch of it on the auditorium floor and said, “That just cost me five bucks out of my budget.” So–the stuff was inexpensive and no one cared what happened to it.

So one day, I THINK it was about May 15–the weekend heading into Finals–Mayan comes in…and as I write this, I realize it was a Sunday, right after church/lunch–that’s important for the story here in a minute. Anyways, Mayan’s carrying a large tub containing liquid nitrogen probably about three gallons in size, looking for something to do with it. Now, what can you do with liquid nitrogen…something that steams/looks like smoke when it hits a surface. Hmmmm.

Well, another guy was just back from church and lunch and decided to take a shower. That was Max. He was in 310-A, right across from Paul and Ed. Max because the target.

With a number of witnesses (who aided and abetted), Mayan waited for the shower to start, heard Max step in, and took the liquid nitrogen container and slowly started pouring it out next to the bathroom door and the inch-high crack at the bottom of it. Mayan started pouring it quicker and then we had someone (Paul? Ed?) start banging on the bathroom door, yelling “Fire! Fire!”

Inside Max HAD TO HAVE SEEN the smoke from under the door because Mayan was pouring it fast now. There was a commotion inside the bathroom, then the door opens with Max naked trying to pull a towel around himself…as he opens the door to Mayan with his oversized coffee-pot cylinder of liquid nitrogen and 7-8 guys all waiting to watch Max’s expression when he got out of the bathroom.

I don’t remember Max’s expression. I don’t know if he was amused, angry, bothered, or any combination of those. I think he understood he’d been got. I do remember a little bit of a smile, him shaking his head, and saying, “You guys are dicks” before he went back into the bathroom to finish his shower. I think he would’ve been much more upset if cameras were ubiquitous like they are today. Hah–that would’ve made a great TikTok video.

But the beautiful thing–there was no social media. It remains a memory, something that everyone can laugh at, especially if you know the guys involved, but is most special to those who were there in the moment. I wonder if they ever think about it, what details they recall.

No amount of video can bring an event to life–to be real. Watching it on video wouldn’t be the same even for me having been there back in May ’88. What details do I have right? What have I forgotten? What have I embellished? I don’t honestly know. What I’ve written is what I believe to be true–what IS true in my memory…and that has to be good enough.

More is Often Less

Listening to coaches at tournaments (yes, basically eavesdropping, but if I can hear you thru earplugs...you’re talking loud) and reading on social media, a lot of coaches believe that the secret to improving a team is more days of work, longer work, more commitment.

I think this is promoted from stories about football coaches who sleep in their office, only sleep 3 hrs/night during the season and demand their assistants do that as well. Once someone has success with that, you KNOW someone’s going to only sleep two hours, do whatever to go past the already silly bar that has been set. When that’s a team that is in the national media, people not at Alabama, Texas et al. are bound to imitate what they see.

Think this isn’t true? Watch old basketball videos from before 1971. Coaches aren’t yelling at players, screaming at officials. So what changed? Bobby Knight. At that point, it had been a dozen years since Indiana was ranked at the end of a year. Knight came in and two years later was in the Final Four and over 29 years, made 26 tourney appearances (context–the field was smaller in the 70s when IU didn’t qualify those three times). Add in his success with USA Basketball, the TV/media coverage, and EVERYONE started coaching like Knight rather than past greats. Is the coaching from coaches who yell superior to those who don’t? Nope. Research shows that clearly. (Studies suggest athletes who play for yelling coaches get PTSD/struggle emotionally for years afterwards.)

Think about your program. Are kids better off with physical rest, emotional health, if they are forced* to be at volleyball four times/week for 2-4 hours?

*It’s forced…kids understand coaches who say something’s voluntary don’t mean that…that attendance is mandatory if you want playing time in the upcoming season..

We’ll switch to baseball for a sec…there are more individuals under the age of 23 having UCL/Tommy John surgery now on a weekly basis than had it at all from 1974-1985…more in a week than 11 years!! More is not better. Think about this stat–what happens when we have games, practices, specialist coaches, private lessons…then add in research from the Aspen Institute that asserts only 29% of youth coaches in any sport have education/training in doing what they do.

So physically–what is all that extra practice accomplishing? Are you setting kids up for elbow, shoulder, knee, ankle surgeries? (Don’t go looking at joint replacement surgery rates for women…and if you do, don’t go looking at the rate for women who played travel sports 25-35 years prior…don’t look at the same arc of the graphs or what it means for the future…because what it means is there’s never been a better time to be an orthopedic surgeon.)

Mentally–where is the break for them? Kids are now asked to commit to a sport 12-months/year. Where is the time for band, theater, other sports, or *gasp* academic work? Regardless of sport, fewer than 1-in-a-1,000 kids are going to have a career in sports, fewer still past college, so why demand they put so much into a sport that, frankly, is irrelevant to the next 50-90 years of their life? –Yes, sports teaches values like teamwork, but is that really going on with extra practices and weekly tournaments? –because it’s taking away opportunities for life skills beyond a gymnasium.

A large majority of kids drop out of sports before age 14 because of the pressure applied by adults (they turn to video games BECAUSE parents don’t understand them). They are taught that playing sports is not about enjoyment, it is about working to win and/or ‘win a scholarship’. That’s a serious distortion–but it parallels elsewhere…when’s the last time you saw kids playing a sport adults weren’t busy organizing?

Just as bad–how many kids never take up sports because they weren’t enrolled in the Travel Super-Elite Select Star Club program at age 5? Those parents/kids are outright told they are behind/have no chance–and if the travel coaches are involved, they WILL make an example of that kid…see what happens if you don’t play travel-ball?*

*I lived this with a son–he didn’t play travel basketball, went out for it in 8th grade anyways, was never put in even in blowouts…he never played again. –this is a kid who has gone on to be a D-1 track athlete and has competed in hurdles, javelin, and pole vault, then turned around and started a men’s club VB team at his school…in addition to spending time as a gymnastic instructor. They turned away a D1 athlete because he didn’t play travel-basketball from age 10-12.

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So–more is less. As a coach, you have passion for your sport, but you’re adult–you’ve made YOUR OWN life choices–you can’t impose those on kids…not directly, at least. Why not consider a different path–why not focus on developing passion and curiosity? How do you do that?

• No activity goes more than 15 minutes…end things before boredom sets in
• Limit the length of training to no more than two hours. With 14u, probably better still to go with 90 minutes as a limit.
• Only have sessions once or twice per week. Let kids enjoy other activities.
• NEVER have penalties for not showing.
• Don’t focus on technical instruction–let them explore the game on their own terms.
  • Leave instruction for when they ask you questions–then answer the question they asked, no more or less.
• Set up the activities with the question “Is this fun?” in mind, NOT “Is this making them better?” –if they are doing something they enjoy, they’ll work harder which means they get better faster…they’ll enjoy that which drives them onwards…and that’s INTERNAL motivation, not EXTERNAL–so they can carry that over to everything else they do beyond your sport.
• Limiting time limits repetition–which means you reduce overwork injuries. You give them time to rest and recover–because these kids also have other sports plus PE classes. Rest is the absolute most underutilized activity for improving teams.

The End of Tournaments

Yeah, the blog title probably sounds ominous [cue horror music]…but, you’ll see where it’s leading.

I was officiating this weekend and sometimes it’s your turn to take it in the shorts–you get the last match on a court…right after a couple go three or there’s a protest or whatever. For me, it happened Saturday AND Sunday (Sunday I was supposed to be the 2nd-3rd court done…wound up next to last as one match went 27-25, 25-23, 22-20). Now–this is something that coaches AND referees can related to–it’s not criticism or anything…just a post of empathy.

I’m working that last match on Saturday, it’s about 830pm, and it’s my eighth match in a loud facility. By that point, EVERYONE is getting a little whistle-happy and players are hungry/tired, too, and moods aren’t helped when they see all the courts around them done with people leaving (or Sunday when they started setting up for the next event that evening…). You start with a ton of courts, all loud…and then a few are done–and it’s still loud…a few more end and you realize you aren’t yelling to be heard, that you don’t need to blow as hard on a whistle because there’s less volume. More courts finish and then there’s only your court and one on the far other end of the facility–you can’t see it because of a screen or a building’s shape…but you know it’s there because you hear a whistle every few seconds and an occasional ‘Huzzah!’ from parents cheering or teams screaming with excitement. Otherwise, it’s just your match going on.

At a break during play each day, I took out my earplugs, adjusted how I blew my whistle again…and had a weird thought.

It’s lonely like that–watching courts ‘disappear’ one by one until it’s you and a whistle from far away–and I wondered, “Did the last dinosaurs feel this?” Reflecting on this on my drive home, the dinosaur thought turned more serious–as you age, you begin to lose friends and colleagues to death until eventually there’s only one or two left…and then…no one.

What’s this have to do with you, me, coaching, or reffing?

For all of us, everyone around us, there’s a LAST tournament. For a bunch of HS seniors–the next month or so is the last time they’ll play organized ball. For some coaches and referees, when this club season’s over, they’ll walk away from the game–exhaustion, health, other opportunities. We’ll lose those voices. And it made me realize–I need to do a better job appreciating the work others do around me, with me, for me. I may never meet them again, may never learn their names, but my kindness can still make a difference in the moment, maybe remind them of what they cherish within the game.

So as your season approaches its end, perhaps take a moment of kindness to appreciate your athletes, your opponents, the referee, the work team.

A Coach’s Responsibility is to This Year

So in March Madness, Kansas got curb-stomped. This came after they were beaten badly in the Big 12 Tournament. Media called it wily/crafty to lose the tournament to get rest for players before March Madness, but it turns out that wasn’t really it. We know that because of what Self himself said: “I think for the last month, I’ve been thinking about next season, to be honest.”

Now, frankly, I’m not a Self fan and I don’t care a whit for Kansas basketball. When they lose, it’s a joyous day for humanity but that’s not what got me here with his statement to TV.

What bothers me is that as a coach–your first and foremost responsibility is to the moment, the team you have–NOT the team you want OR will have incoming. Those athletes are there for (at most) four years–you’re managing at LEAST 25% of their college career–right now! (If you are at a juco–that’s 50% of the time they’ll be in your program).

Let’s go back a month. Had it been a long season of basketball for Kansas? Not really. Four weeks before he made the comment, Kansas was 21-6 and still undefeated at home. At the time, they were third in the conference standings. And then…right when Self admits he started thinking about next year, the wheels come off. They finish the conference schedule 1-3, getting smoked by 30 at Houston and losing at home vs. BYU. They go to the Conference Tournament and they lose to Cincinnati by 20 in their first game. In March Madness, they were only saved from a 1st round loss by a bad referee call.

Pre-thinking of next year: 21-6
Post-thinking: 2-5

See the issue? Self (and the media) make it seem like the players weren’t up to it, that there’ll be better players next year that can get the job done–but it sure looks like he had a good group right up until February 24th.

As coaches, it doesn’t matter if we recruited them, if the incoming freshmen are more talented than the outgoing seniors are–you coach what you have! Athletes–whether 10yo or college upperclassmen, they can tell when a coach is invested in their improvement and success. If a coach checks out, then so, too, will the athletes.

But what if the athletes don’t seem to care? –then you, the coach, are the adult in the room. You remain committed, you give your full effort. Of course, Self’s also getting paid $5+ million/year…that makes it worse.

“People, Ideas, Hardware–in that order”

The quote comes from John Boyd, the Air Force officer whose ideas reshaped the design of military aircraft, Marine Corps combat philosophy, and was the creator of the OODA Decision Loop. He’s a thinker people ought to know about, well beyond those who pay attention to military affairs.

I think about this stuff in relations to teaching and coaching. If I listed all of Boyd’s credentials or ideas, you’d see he’s right 99% of the time–at least. That means the odds are good that his priority order quoted above is correct…which is a problem, isn’t it? Because that’s not how we think of classrooms and schools.

We pay lip service to the kids–instead, adults talk about educational theories or bicker about terms such as ‘woke’ or ‘critical race theory’ (ideas) and then teachers get pressured to increase their usage of technology in the classroom, so that schools issue laptops and tablets to students and then expect teachers to use those, smartboards, etc. (Hardware) even if teachers have not been given anything more than rudimentary training on the technology during an in-service seminar.

Skim the news–does anyone actually talk about the children? Even in cases of school shootings, you get statements of “think about the kids” given as platitudes before launching into bromides about gun control or the damage of ‘wokeness’–that aren’t about the frickin’ kids.

Alas, all that–it’s not in our control. Think global, act local. How we coach IS in our control.

In terms of coaching–how often do you think about ‘ideas’ rather than the people you are coaching? Coaches are perpetually looking for a better system, better (standardized) techniques, the perfect drill to solve ___________. The unspoken assumption behind this is that something that worked for me will automatically translate to other people. The thing is–they don’t. My system may work because I have a HOF libero passing while you may have someone brand new to the sport. My drill/technique won’t work for you. A 6’4 kid will have an easier time hitting than a 5’8 kid…or my drill for the shorter hitter may be irrelevant for the 6’5 college all-American…but we STILL insist that there are superior systems–forgetting that at the core of what we do are people. Each person is distinct and different and if you do not treat them individually within the team, in the end, you will have failed. Failed? Yup–not necessarily on the court but with their emotional and physical development which should be the first priority of youth coaching.

Treating each player as an individual is challenging. It means a lot of conversations, a lot of working through emotions, and it requires a WHOLE LOT of adjustment by the coach to become better him/herself…and because coaches don’t want to really change, a lot of coaches give up on kids. And that’s sad because there are great players out there who don’t fit preconceived notions...and I’m all about getting better at that