The Screaming Viking

Traditionally, Bottineau doesn’t have a very good football team.  I credit that to the kids that play exclusively hockey or basketball and forgo football.  I don’t think that’s the best idea, in BFE ND the odds of you getting a scholarship is pretty slim, and pro can’t even be a thought.  I think it makes for a better athlete in any single sport if the athlete plays multiple sports.  Football can be a great sport for helping foot work and being more physical for basketball players, the cardio and “in shape” aspect can’t be ignored for any sport that comes after.  It’s the athlete and the parent’s choice if they play of course..and this is the same thing we struggled with when I was in school.  If all the guys had played that could have…we’d have a better chance at being a better team at the very least.

This year Bottineau did quite well, they went 8-1 and took the second seed in the region for playoff ball.  The game they lost was by a field goal at the end in really bad weather…so even in that game they were competitive.  Being the 2nd seed, they got to host the first game of the playoffs…they faced Wahpeton.  Looking at the difference between the teams warming up…Wahpeton had quite a size advantage.  Their linemen looked like they were going to walk all over us.  We have fast guys at all positions, but, especially this time of year, there is no substitute for size and pounding the ball down the middle.  Our backs looked to be a bit bigger than theirs, and our boys are fast.  The one position we have had an advantage over everyone we’ve played is at running back.  We have two guys back there with great size and speed.

Bottineau received the ball in the beginning and went 3 and out…it didn’t look good.  Wahpeton took the ball, ate up about 10 min worth of clock and drove down the other end of the field.  They got called back inside the 10 for a hold…but it didn’t matter as they punched the ball in.  After that, I don’t remember quite how the scoring went.  There are a couple of key plays though that ended up blowing the game wide open.  The first was an uncalled late hit.  One of our guys, I don’t remember if it was the QB, was down…clearly down…and one of there guys comes in and pounds him in the back.  It was the kind of hit that a player in the NFL would be writing a check for.  The crowd erupted.  The ref was right there…no flag.  Our man wasn’t injured…but it was still something that could have been flagged.  Honestly, I don’t much care about late hits…I didn’t see it as a huge deal at the time.  If this had been the only call that was blatantly missed it wouldn’t be a big deal, but it was one of a few that turned the tide.

The next missed call was huge.  They broke around the outside and our contain man was held bigger than life.  It was one of those shoulder turning type holds that you just can’t miss.  This was our outside contain man, so they were able to bounce outside and got a 40ish yard td run.  Maybe he would have made the tackle, maybe not…but it was a hold, the ref was right there and no flag.  Our head football coach is usually a cool customer, there have been close games through the season and he doesn’t react too much to bad calls…but this time he went ape shit.  It was to the point of being restrained he was going so nuts.  It was good to see tbh.

The next missed call was the game…there wasn’t going to be a way for the boys to recover after this.  We’re on their 2ish yard line.  Our back swings out to the crowd side, stretches out and crosses the goal line/fumbles.  Now the ref was right there so they should have the best view of the call.  The fans (including myself) thought he was in, then fumbled.  The refs confer…nope, fumble before the goal line, they recover.  I thought it was the wrong call, the crowd went ape….clearly everyone thought it was the wrong call.  Wether it was or not, who really knows.  Up to this point, they had that 1 holding penalty called (we had maybe 2?).  After the refs set them at the 20, they start calling procedure penalties on them like crazy.  They finally managed to run 3 plays and had to punt.  I could see how they might have jumped once…twice…but several in a row?  It doesn’t make sense.  It is that set of calls that makes me believe that the refs also thought they screwed up on the td/fumble call.  They kick to us…we start our series, off sides call.  Maybe they came with a rash of penalties…but it seemed like a bunch of make up calls to me.

Later on there was another swing around the outside/hold type call that was missed.  One of our players was giving the ref hell about it…tbh, it was late in the game and didn’t much matter.

In all fairness without the penalty calls (or with them I guess) Wahpeton still had the better looking team.  Football, esp at the high school level, is a game of momentum.  Maybe we could have come out on top but in all honesty they looked sharper than we did today.  They ran a 1/2 back pass that left us in the dust.

We had a good year though, it would have been nice to keep it going.

The first week of practice is in the books.  It’s gone pretty well.  I have worked them harder than I did the boys, which is to be expected since they are the next age level up.  The boys would do around 6-8 crushers then maybe 10ish sprints (1 sprint is down and back).  The number of crushers increased towards the end as their conditioning got better, and the number of sprints went down by about 1/2.  The girls have started off with about 8 crushers and 25 sprints.  The boys went cross court, so it wasn’t quite the full distance…the girls are going full court, so overall it does add up to a bit more running.  Add to that the drills they are doing and overall they are working pretty hard.  There has been some complaining back and forth between the girls, but overall I think they get why they are doing this.  This type of conditioning we’re only doing for 3 days.  After that, the amount of running goes down and we spend more time focusing on basketball skills and team drills.  They will still need to run to keep their cardio up…but there is more fun stuff mixed in.  I was a bit concerned about how they would handle it, but they’ve done well.

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this group of girls, but they have the skill levels you would expect at this age for the most part.  Some of them are advanced, some are catching up…but over all they are where I would expect them to be.  The main thing we are going to be struggling with is the length of the season.  From our first game week till the last week there is 13 game days in 6 weeks.  We can practice 4 days a week (we don’t go wednesday, school policy not mine).  During that time we lose 2 practice days for thanksgiving, (prior to the first game week we lose 2 practice days to school breaks as well…).  That gives us 7 practice days once games get going.  We have 10 practices before the first game, one of which falls on a Monday of a game week…so that gives us 17 practices total.  That doesn’t seem like near enough to me.  I’m not a huge fan of how compressed the season is.  It would be nice if it was a couple – 3 weeks longer with the games a little more spread out.

Something else that has me a little disappointed is that the 8th grade doesn’t have a tournament, and the 7th grade’s tournament is the 3rd game day of the season.  I’d really like it if both teams had a tournament and they were at the end of the season.  It gives you something to work for.  Looking over the schedule the team I expect to be the toughest for us we face twice, once in the middle of the schedule and once at the end.  I’ll use that as my measurement game, it will tell me how far the girls have progressed over the course of the season.

We’ll work with what we have, I expect every team will be facing the same challenge.

Article source: http://www.hillbillycoach.com/2011/10/28/first-week-girls-jr-high/

The Jr. High girls started up yesterday.  The first practice went better than I expected.  So far they seem to talk less than the boys and are a bit more engaged in what we are doing.  It looks like I have right around 20 girls total, 8ish 7th graders and 12 or so 8th graders.  The numbers are a little high for the 8th grade, but that’s fine at this point.  I think this is the age where girls either start showing a high aptitude for the sport or they begin to drop off a bit.  I have no basis for that statement other than my own observations.  At this time of year basketball and hockey battle for players.  This age is when they really have to make the decision about which sport they are going to commit to since the seasons overlap.  They could potentially do some of both, but they would end up missing practices and games in each.  I don’t think that’s very fair to their teammates in either sport.

Yesterday I was the only coach there.  I was told before season there would be another one with me (a young woman), then was told she might have some family issues that would take her out of the area for the season.  Yesterday it was confirmed that she will not be able to coach.  I spoke with the AD and he has someone on standby.  After it was confirmed the first girl won’t be coaching he’s going to talk to the second person.  It’s a lady around my age I would guess.  I haven’t met her or really know much of anything about her.  That’s the way I came into the system last year though too, the coach I was going to be working with didn’t really know anything about me.  I think things will work out well…the only concern I have is that she might not want to condition the girls as much as I do.  Hopefully we find common ground on that.  Everything else I would expect will work out fine, and it’s pure speculation on the conditioning comment, we might be fine there as well.  Maybe she’ll want them better conditioned than I do…who knows.

I like to go into practice with a road map of drills and running I want them to do.  I don’t stick to it completely rigidly, but it gives me something to reference if we begin to get off track.  I think it’s especially important in the first few practices for things to flow from one drill to another without a bunch of “ahh…um….what should we do now…um…”.  Once I have several years under my belt I assume I’ll be able to roll without a cheat sheet, but for now I don’t see anything wrong with it at all.  I don’t break it down by times, but I do have it broke out into segments.  Basically it’s the stuff I want them to do before they get a shot of water.  I try to keep these segments focused on specific skill areas, defense for one segment, ball handling, shooting…etc.  Not that it has to be done this way…but I think it might help their mind set as they get back in to the game.  If I can keep them focused on defensive footwork for 20min, then shift to shooting form for 20…so on it should give me a little more targeted practicing.  Looking at the calendar we only have 10 practices before our first game…so I’ll need any focus tricks I can find.

The overall skill levels of the players is a little better than I had hoped for at the start of the season.  We have some that excel and some that are a little behind, but overall they have a collectively higher level of skill than I expected.  I’ve no idea what the other teams look like though.  I’ve seen a few of the 7th grade teams last year (in 6th grade) but that doesn’t really help much…lots of things can change.  It’s hard to “guess” at what you should be focusing on from week to week when you only have your players to compare to.  I might think they are doing really well then in a game come to find out we are way behind.  Not that I could push them harder in specific areas, I push as hard as I can in all areas, but I -feel- like maybe I could have worked something a little harder.  With the boys I found out I should have worked in a couple of offensive sets towards the end…so I’ll try to get the girls going on an offense here the first part of next week.  I’m going to spend this week entirely on conditioning (unless of course the other coach they bring in has different ideas).

The girls worked pretty hard yesterday…or at least they think they did.  I brought them together at the end and told them that was a light conditioning practice since it was the first one…the next couple will get harder.  I told them to believe that they will adjust to the physical work, it will get easier and translate into fun on the court against other teams.

We’ll see how it goes…day 1, in the books.

Article source: http://www.hillbillycoach.com/2011/10/25/jr-high-girls-bball/