And the Off-Season Begins
This week marked the first three days of the Broughton lacrosse team’s off-season. As the head coach I am even more excited about getting the boys in shape. I’ve gotten access to the weight rooms this year too. I’ve upped the intensity and the boys, so far, seem to be buying in already. Considering fall sports are still in full swing and winter sports are doing their pre-season workouts, I’ve been happy with the turn out. I think it will be even better when the fall sports are over. I have about a dozen boys that play some level of football, half that that run cross country, and even a few that are in the marching band.
With three days in there are only 123 more until the first day of tryouts!
Prepping For 2010
With schools around the country kicking off in the next week or two it’s time for the return of High School athletics. That means it’s time to start preparing for the next year. The spring of 2010 will mark my first year has a head coach and I’m pretty excited about it.
I’ve been doing my best to gather all the information I can about scheduling, uniforms, and practice gear. One thing I’ve learned from my two years as an assistant is that if you need something in February you better get on it no later than October.
I feel by getting a lot of this out of the way now, it will allow me to really focus on off-season training in the fall and pre-season come January! Plus if everything rolls like I’d like we are going to look sexy this spring!!
The Ambiguity of Playoffs
No matter what level, what sport, or what system of calculation is used, someone will always be upset about the results of a playoff bracket. The biggest gripes are usually about who gets in versus who stays at home, but other times there is also debate about who is seeded where.
I coach lacrosse in North Carolina and our post-season starts later this week. In the 4A division there is a 16 team playoff based completely on an RPI system (.25 x your win % + .5 x your opponents’ win % + .25 x your opponents’ opponents’ win %). Not the best system obviously with SO much weight being put on the strength of schedule and no checks like making sure that a team has at least a .500 record. With this system I admit I’m more upset than some since my team came in #17 and the #15 team had a (5-9) record. There were also some seeding issues, similar to Notre Dame in this years NCAA Div I bracket , in which an undefeated team was ranked #11, below a team they’d beaten twice.
In the end all the speculation and arguing won’t get you anywhere. Everyone had opportunities to scheudle tougher or win a close game, and now you play the hand you are dealt. For some that means it play until you lose. For most of us it means preparring for the offseason and making sure we do the right things to avoid missing the playoffs in the future.
Weekend, Odds and Ends
So this was quite a productive weekend! Started off early Saturday morning with a victory in Super Athlete Challege Event #3 – the mile run. After taking a 5 second victory I proceed to take two games of corn hole before getting breakfast. Since we had to wait until 11 for the bars to open I had to wait for my victory beers, but it was ok, because they were still awesome.
Later Saturday I just kinda chilled around the house until my mother in-law invited me over for dinner since Jamie wasn’t around to cook, yes I’ve got it made!
Today was a lot of yard work, some oranization around the house, clearing out the old storage, hanging out with the wife, a little lacrosse on TV, and we watched “Yes Man!” with Jim Carrey( I think I might make a page for Jim Carrey movies…). Oh and I did some work for the NASPAA website as well. Very productive day overall.
Now it’s a little past 11 and I’ve been spending some time modifying the blog. Changed themes, this won’t be the last time I assure you, and updated to the tweets are only posted once a week, instead of every day. It was depressing me that 99% of my posts were of my tweets. I’m hoping this makes me keep more active on the posting. I plan to write one about gearing up for playoffs, since hopefully we will be.
Instilling a Work Ethic
I find it interesting that with so much lacrosse on TV that I don’t spend more time reprimanding my kids for trying what they’ve seen. Maybe it’s because I’m in NC, but I know that when I was these kid’s age I looked forward to the 1 game every-other week that was televised on WMAR-2.
As such I’m finding it necessary to show my kids things they should work on, in such a fashion that it’s something they could do on their own. Even after doing that, I’ve only got a handful of kids who really have the bug. True Lax-rats, and it’s exciting to coach them everyday.
As the sport grows here in NC I know there will come a day when we have the dedicated athletes that love the sport. For now I will continue to plant the seed, infect them with the bug, and otherwise do what I can to instill a work ethic and a drive to be the best.
Good luck to me!
The most productive day ever!
At least in a very long time!…
With Jamie being out of town this weekend I was left to my own devices. I wasn’t too productive yesterday spending much more time watching sports(lacrosse and basketball) than doing any house work. As a result I was determined to make today ridiculously productive around the new house. And thanks to the gmail tasks I was able to keep it all organized. Here’s what I accomplished:
- Raked the leaves: That is front and back yard. The backyard took nearly two and a half hours and probably encompasses nearly 30lbs of leaves and other natural debris that was removed from underneath the back deck. Included in the findings, other than leaves was; a beer can, a red solo cup, a curler, a golf ball, and two 5 x 2.5 feet pieces of glass that were under about a quarter inch of dirt.
- Bag the leaves: Only did the front, but the back is waiting tomorrow
- Set up the lawn mower: That really wansn’t that difficult despite the MIL jumping ahead a couple steps more than once.
- Mow the lawn: It had been a while, and was difficult to tell with the light grass, but it looks much better.
- Hang the blinds in the guest room: This is half done. I did one window and decided I needed to get started on the outside as I was staring into the front yard disaster for 25 minutes. I’ll finish this up tomorrow too. Parents are going to be our inaugural guests next weekend!
- Do the laundry: That’s right ladies, without provocation I did this week’s laundry. Don’t be too hard on your men!
- Recruiting: I contacted a coach about some potential players for him and also contacted a couple players about what they planned to do in the future. I’m pretty excited about this coming recruiting season and getting some of my boys lined up to play in college if they want to.
- Organize the office: The smallest room in the house is mine to do with as I please! I finished organizing and did the hanging that was possible. Really starting to shape up. Not liking that I’m going to have to make a choice between my printer and my second monitor.
- Dinner with the in-laws: Even though Jamie was out of town I still popped by the in-laws for dinner. I’m really blessed in this aspect as not only are they not psycho, they are down right awesome. Shrimp and steak was also awesome.
- Pick up wife: Best part of the weekend was picking up Jamie from the airport!
- Blog: I was excited about all I did and I’m trying to be a better blogger, even if no one cares what I think/say/did/want/need/have/smell like(which can’t be good right now)!
Now I’m exhausted and will be calling it an early evening.
Bouncing back
It’s always difficult to take a bad loss. In my playing days I would meticulously pick through all the bad plays I had made, or hustle plays I missed. I would then strive to fix those same mistakes in the following days of practice.
As a coach I find it frustrating that I can only review and fix the decision I do or don’t make. And analyze the positions I put the players in to see how I might organize it different.
The greatest fault lies in that I can’t make the plays. When I make the right decision and the boys don’t execute all I can do is mark it down and plan to address it in practice. Hoping the drills I come up with will be enough to take a step in the right direction in fixing the issue.
It’s a fact in athletics that you’re gonna take your lumps. They key is never to stay down on the mat. No matter how hard you just got hit
It Begins?
I have officially entered the bloggosphere. I don’t know what it is I’ll be blogging about lacrosse, web development/design…we’ll see what happens
