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.

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It looks like I’ll be able to get on with the 5&6th and 7&8th boys basketball for the upcoming year.  I’m not sure if that will allow me to do the girl’s 5th&6th at the end of the year, but we’ll see how the dates work out.  I would like to coach the 6th grade girls.  I worked with them a little bit last year and there is quite a bit of potential there.  I think some more work this year and they could be pretty productive.

I was able to work with some of the boys in the above groups during basketball camp this past summer.  There is quite a bit of potential there but I’ll need to battle the NBA mentality that was there for some reason.  I’m not sure if the guys I played with had the same mentality at these ages, but anytime I’ve been involved with these age groups it seems to be getting more and more prevalent.  Hopefully we can shelve some of that mentality and build a solid foundation for the kids to build on at the higher levels.

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About mid season I heard from some friends of mine (parents of a girl in that age group) that there was only one coach and she was pretty short handed.  I made the offer to the super that I would be willing to help out, and I emailed the athletic director as well.  I was contacted the next day and lined up to help out with practice.  I was also informed that I would be compensated a little bit for the position.  All the coaching positions with the school are paid spots, and that’s fine.  I thought since I was coming in significantly after the season started that I would just consider it a try out for other positions in the upcoming school year.  It sounds like I might get a couple bucks and that’s great, but I still saw it as more of a try out than anything.

There was somewhere between 1/2 and 1/3 of the season left, so I knew I wasn’t going to be able to influence the children that much.  My “style” of teaching is pretty old school as well.  I don’t believe in so much of a set offense for the first year players (5th grade) and an awfully simplistic offense for the 6th grade.  I think it’s more beneficial for them to know how to handle the ball, pass, play defense and dive for the ball.  The offense will come off of those skills.  I think the basic pick and roll, give and go style offense is more than sufficient for the 5th grade.  I like to work in the idea of the post position a bit with the 6th grade, building off the pick and roll, give and go concepts.  All offenses ever derived by anyone who has ever touched a basketball are built on pick and roll give and go fundamentals.  Once they master those ideas, they can execute any offense.  It can really be broken down that simply.

I can’t comment on how the children were progressing before I came along and because of that I can’t say for certain that my influence helped or hindered them.  I could see the progress they made while I was there and the effort they put in, but maybe that would have blossomed without me being there as well…I can’t possibly know.

It might come off as a little sexist, but it’s been my experience that one of the hardest things to teach young girls is how to be competitive.  It seems like out of the gate boys are just inherently more competitive with each other.  Even the boys that are not as skilled as some of their peers still seemed to feel the drive to beat their opponents.  Girls, on the other hand, have seemed like they are more content to let the opponent win and don’t make it a matter of life and death.  Maybe it’s biological, or maybe it’s the difference in the way we raise boys compared to girls.  So from the start, my focus was on bringing out competitiveness in these girls.

How do you do that?  How do you teach someone to be competitive?  You would think that it might be different for each person but in the end it comes down to one simple idea, praise success.

There were a couple of girls on the team that I didn’t think were terribly interested in the competitive side of the sport.  It happens with some players at this age around this area and that’s fine.  Some kids like to play to be with their friends, their parents push them to play to see if they like it or have an aptitude for it…that’s fine.  There’s no way to know at this age really who’s going to be a good player, who’s going to like it and all that unless you give your kid a push to play.  I enjoy working with these students as well because they tend to be a little more relaxed and just like hanging out.  I tried to give everyone the same amount of playing time while still trying to balance out what I had on the floor to keep the game competitive.  Last weekend, I’m playing a couple of these girls…I’m walking up and down the side lines bellering and directing things…and one of these girls suddenly came alive.  She took some direction and was in the spot on the floor I wanted her…the ball bounced her direction and she was all over it…then it happened again…and again…now she was in position on her own, I didn’t have to tell her…she slid over on D…she’s rotating, she’s chasing the ball on offense…she took the ball from another girl…out of no where she just came alive.  This was a girl that was quiet during practice…wouldn’t look me in the eyes, always had her head down and now suddenly her head was up and she was showing some drive to win.  We had one game left after that one and she carried that effort right over into the next game…and built on it.  Took a couple of shots (she might have made one, I can’t remember), was down on the floor once, hustling everywhere for the ball and putting in effort.  Her world on defense expanded from a singular focus on her person to sliding over to stop the ball and working for boards.  I was pretty impressed.

There was another girl whom I couldn’t get much hustle out of.  She was running at 1/2 speed…just wouldn’t work hard.  She didn’t break much of a sweat, wasn’t breathing heavy when I’d pull her out, generally not working hard.  I had a discussion with her on Saturday about her level of effort.  I told her I didn’t care if she knew exactly what was going on all the time, she can still work hard.  If she doesn’t know what to do…go after the ball, crash the boards…etc.  It didn’t seem to help.  I pulled her out of a game and told her if she isn’t going to hustle I’m going to sit her down.  I’d ask her if she’s going to work, she’d say yes…I’d check her in and nothing…1/2 speed again.  I pulled her out and told her if she isn’t going to work she isn’t going to play.  We came to our last game and she came alive as well…diving for balls, grabbing boards.  She ended with 4-6pts for the game and was running the point for my second unit…as well as guarding their point.  It’s the most work I saw out of her all year…I told her so and the more often I let her know it the harder she worked.

At some point for both these girls it went from ‘work’ to ‘fun’ which is the way it’s suppose to go for kids in these sports.

Now I’m not some bleeding heart that things everyone needs to win all the time and we’re going to ignore what they do wrong.  I corrected them quite often, but I believe I did it in a way that wasn’t so much accusatory as it was encouraging.  In the end, I was happy with their effort for the part of the season that I was a part of.  I’m hoping to get more opportunities next year with both the boys and girls teams in whatever capacity they will let me prove my techniques work.  I won’t hide the fact that my goal is to get to the top level for the school and help build Bottineau into a top tier program in the state.  It might seem lofty and ambitious…but coaches around the area are successful and I highly doubt they waited to be handed opportunity and players.  I believe both can be manufactured…the next 5 years will tell us if I’m right.

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There have been a plethora of things that have been turning me off on professional sports, and to some extent college as well.  One of the most aggravating is the bombardment of advertising.  There are so many commercial breaks, in game sponsors, 1/2 time sponsors, league sponsors etc that it’s getting a little sickening to watch.  I would gladly pay some money (not sure how much per league) to watch the game with no commercials, to not see a billboard right in line with the T.V. camera that changes sponsors at a given interval.  One might think you can go see a game live and not have these issues, but it’s more comfortable to watch my big ol’ T.V. than it is to squeeze my tush into a seat at a stadium…plus the view from the T.V. is usually better.  The bombardment of advertising is something that has turned me off from most all sporting events outside of teams I directly follow.

The lockout and labor strife is turning me off of the game.  If they do get a deal done, I don’t think it’s going to be until guys have missed a few checks.  The players will need to feel the financial pinch before they cave.  The owners will need to feel a financial pinch before they cave.  For that to happen this needs to be a long labor dispute.  What is the quality of the games going to be like if they do come back this year?  Even if they only miss all of the off season programs and some of training camp, the first hand full of games are going to really suck.  They usually don’t start clicking till week 3 or so on a normal year.  Beyond that, I feel that both sides should have been able to amicably come to an agreement on how to split revenue before this point.  I’m not going to say (like I’ve heard from a lot of people) “OMG 9 billion?  billionaires against millionaires!”  It doesn’t matter what your income is or how much money is to be split up between owners and labor, there is still going to be a bit of give and take.  For the most part, people expand their lifestyle to fit their income.  It’s pretty ignorant to think that because someone makes a “large” amount of money they should be just fine not making that money for awhile.  They have set up their lifestyle to expect that money to keep rolling in.  The wisdom of this can be questioned to hell and back, but that’s a different discussion.  The fact is both the players and the owners depend on that level of income.  I’ve read quite a bit about the problems between labor and management, and I do think management wanted to put the squeeze on labor and never had intended to give them a deal.  I expect they intended to make labor feel the financial sting so they would be more pliable.  I don’t like that at all.  I also think that if owners want more money they should have to justify why they need more money.  Although I’m not sure the players should have unfettered access to the owners books.  It should be up to the league to be auditing the expenses of each team and cutting out the “crap” expenses.  Flights charged to the team that are not for team business…ect.  I also don’t like how each side is saying they are “thinking of the fans!”  Stop talking to fans like they are children.  We get what it’s about, both sides need to give.

And the final straw…the thing that pushed me over the edge…the new “proposed” definitions of defenseless players:

Rules defining a defenseless player will be expanded and now will include eight categories:

• A quarterback in the act of throwing;

• A receiver trying to catch a pass;

• A runner already in the grasp of tacklers and having his forward progress stopped;

• A player fielding a punt or a kickoff;

• A kicker or punter during the kick;

• A quarterback at any time after change of possession;

• A receiver who receives a blind-side block;

• A player already on the ground.

A qb in the act of throwing?  What kind of sense does that make?  It seems like the competition committee expect 300+ lb linemen to be able to stop instantly.  If a lineman is falling towards the qb or about to hit him all it takes is for a smart qb to hurry up and start throwing…boom 15 yards.  This rule could be abused pretty hardcore by the qb’s in the league.  I would expect the next step to be “can’t hit him from behind!”  I’m surprised that didn’t come first actually.

A receiver trying to catch a pass…at what point is someone trying to catch a pass? and have actually caught the pass so you can hit them?  The idea of rocking the receiver is to knock the pass away from him, suddenly we have to all take a time out so he can catch it then we can play again?

A runner with forward progress stopped…why hasn’t the whistle blown?  We see this all the time actually, and I’ve been complaining about it for years.  A runner is stopped and just beginning to move backwards.  The whistle should be blown and the play stopped, instead the ref’s let it go for just a little longer than it should, just enough to give the runner a chance to break free.  I agree that he’s in a defenseless situation..but the solution to it is not to expect the players to judge when forward progress has stopped, it’s for the officials to blow that whistle so the players know the play is over.

A player fielding a punk or kickoff…this is already a penalty, why does it need to be eligible for a suspension?

A kicker or punter during a kick…they aren’t wearing pads?  You can’t go all out to block a kick?  Again this is already a penalty, why does it need a suspension.  I’d like the see the stats on these kinds of penalties during the year, and a review of how many were actually deemed malicious.

A qb after change of possession…alright, we can see the purpose of this rule.  After a fumble or a pick it’s standard practice to try and lay out the qb with a “block” certainly that shouldn’t be allowed, but if you can’t hit them at all…I assume they also cannot tackle the ball carrier.

A receiver getting blocked blind sided and a player on the ground…yeah, I’d be alright with either of those…lets expand that to anyone that receives a blind sided block though.

Unnecessary roughness already takes care of all these and any future situations quite nicely.  It’s a penalty that’s been on the books for…50 years now?  Start using it and fine/suspend guys according to that.  These rules are designed to help the offense and boost the scoring in games.  If they were really concerned about player safety they would mandate the more padded helmets (whatever aaron rodgers wore after concussion 2 or 3 this year) and they would outlaw cut blocking.

Proposing these rules doesn’t necessarily mean they will take hold, but there is a pretty good chance over the next few years they (or something like them) will.  I watch the NFL for big hits and defensive plays (either a product of me being a bears fan or why I’m a bears fan), rules like the ones above are targeted squarely at the defense.  What about the 1/2 back plowing through the line with his head down…what about chop blocks?  Nothing to protect defensive players.  Why not every block in the back…why just receivers?

I might catch a bears game when nothing else is on…but the packers/vikings?  nope…not that I’ll walk out of the room if it’s on, I just don’t really care.  I won’t -have- to make it home to see the bears, I won’t tivo the games…I’ll just see it if I see it.  I doubt I’m going to jump in fantasy leagues this year either.  DUN.

Prep sports is where it’s at.  No ads, no fights over money…just people playing cause they want to play.  I’m down with that.

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