ion Coaching

By Staff

College coaches can be pretty direct when trying to convince potential student-athletes to choose their school. But some do a lot of whispering about the sexual orientation of coaches or athletes at competing schools. Aiming to curb this kind of negative recruiting, the NCAA and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) held a Think Tank on Homophobia in Sport last October, bringing together NCAA staff, athletic directors, coaches, student-athletes, and conference commissioners to brainstorm solutions.

The group’s discussions focused on issues like how to address romantic relationships between teammates and answer parents’ questions about coaches or players. Group members are now in the midst of forming a “roadmap to action,� with participants bringing the discussion back to their respective NCAA committees for brainstorming.

“We need to get everyone on the same page to begin with, so we’re working on a definition of negative recruiting based on perceived sexual orientation,� says Helen Carroll, Sports Project Director for the NCLR. “The think tank wanted to look at what can be done about it and put together information to educate coaches and recruits.�

Rather than introducing legislation to stop the practice, the NCAA and NCLR are developing a “Best Recruiting Practices� paper, which is being written by a group of think tank participants, led by Pat Griffin, Director of the It Takes A Team! Education Campaign for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Issues in Sport through the Womens Sports Foundation. When finished, the paper will be made available to prospective student-athletes and their families.

The think tank also suggests that conferences add policies against negative recruiting to their codes of ethics. “A lot of institutions and conferences already have ethics codes that address discrimation based on sexual orientation, and the NCAA has a policy of non-discrimination that includes sexual orientation,� says Karen Morrison, NCAA Vice President for Educational Services and think tank participant. “The strategy of the think tank was to discuss the issues, talk about the good things that come from positive recruiting, frame some best practices, and then disseminate those ideas to a wide audience.�

While the covert nature of negative recruiting based on perceived sexual orientation makes it difficult to track, Carroll says she believes it’s used frequently in women’s sports and is growing in men’s. As education programs become more common through the NCAA and coaches’ organizations, the practice will begin to subside, she says.

Morrison says the NCAA will also find ways to disseminate the information to potential student-athletes and their families through the NCAA’s online publications. “Many student-athletes don’t consider this to be an issue that would make them decide where to go to school, but there may still be parents who have concerns about it,� Morrison says. “We will have some points of education that will focus on the prospects as well as their families.�

By Staff

In the six months since NBA Commissioner David Stern publicly called for the reform of youth basketball, plans to create a national basketball academy continue to inch forward. In December, Stern and NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver toured IMG Academies in Florida, which train elite tennis, soccer, and basketball athletes and has been suggested as a template for the national academy.

In an interview with the New York Times, Stern expressed his disappointment with the United States’ performance in international competition and its development of young players, describing it as a severely flawed system that exploits young athletes. “I think we could do a better job of rounding and grounding those kids so the adjustment to a professional life is a happy one,� he told the Times. “I’m serious about attempting to improve the overall situation.�

In September, Stern met with NCAA President Myles Brand, NFHS Executive Director Bob Kanaby, National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) Executive Director Jim Haney, and representatives from the Amateur Athletic Union, sneaker companies, and USA Basketball to discuss the state of American youth basketball. In the months following the summit, adidas, Nike, and Reebok announced plans to revamp their summer programs with a greater emphasis on basketball fundamentals.

Sonny Vaccaro, who stepped down as Reebok’s Director of Grassroots Basketball in January, has long advocated setting up a national academy with rotating leadership from all of the major sneaker manufacturers. In a 2006 interview with the Washington Post, he envisioned an academy that would house several dozen athletes from ninth to 12th grades. Academy athletes would be bused to one or more high schools in the area to complete their academic coursework. Funded by NBA athletes and corporate sponsors, the academy would field two teams of players chosen by a selection committee and play a national schedule with televised games.

Although he is no longer working for Reebok, Vaccaro still hopes to open a basketball academy. The NBA and NCAA have been much less specific about their plans. Brand has indicated the NCAA would work with the academy to ensure its graduates’ academic eligibility and Stern has talked about modeling the academy after its European counterparts, which share some of the basic structure of IMG and Vaccaro’s vision. “We’re not kidding around here,� Stern told the Times, adding that he’d like to see the academy up and running as early as 2008.

For a group of collaborators who have yet to publicly discuss their plans, that isn’t a lot of time. “There are many supporters [of the academy], including Myles Brand and the NCAA,� says Bob Williams, Managing Director of Public and Media Relations at the NCAA. “But in terms of the youth basketball issue at heart, an academy is a very narrow approach to a very broad problem. Academic and athletic balance is a problem going all the way back to grade school. We need to reach athletes in those early grades and say, ‘Hey, it’s great that you’re a good basketball player, but you need to worry about academics, too.’�

The NABC’s Haney agrees that the academy is a small piece of the solution, if one at all. “When you think in terms of how many athletes are identified as potential professional players,� he says, “the number is so small that the academy approach is a pretty narrow piece of the big picture.�

By Staff

Faced with a pair of proposals to restrict text messaging from coaches to recruits, the NCAA Division I Management Council defeated a plan that would have prohibited texting during the school day. Instead, it forwarded a more radical proposal to eliminate all instant and text messaging.

Like faxes and e-mail, instant and text messages are currently classified as letters, with no limit to the number a coach may send to recruits. But some administrators feel unlimited text messaging has become unmanageable, compelling coaches to contact prospects constantly while distracting recruits and their families with around-the-clock communications.

During the January Council meeting, the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee spoke out against the intrusiveness of text and instant messaging. “It’s new and it’s technically hip, but it’s not necessary,� Anna Chappell, the Division I SAAC Chair and a former University of Arizona student-athlete, told the NCAA News. “There are a lot of other ways to make a personal connection.�

Under the more moderate proposal, written by a subcommittee of the NCAA Academics/Eligibility/Compliance Cabinet, coaches would have only been allowed to text recruits from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays and from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekends. “The NCAA has been struggling with how to regulate computer-mediated communications,� says Jacqueline Blackett, Associate Athletic Director at Columbia University and a member of the subcommittee. “We need to see this issue through the eyes of student-athletes and address the problems we’ve been hearing about.�

In the more radical plan, proposed by the Ivy Group, coaches would be forbidden to use text and instant messages to communicate with recruits at any time during the recruiting process. Along with opposition from the Football Issues Committee, the Men’s Basketball Issues Committee, and the Women’s Basketball Issues Committee, the proposal is unanimously opposed by the Academics/Eligibility/Compliance Cabinet, which would prefer “reasonable restrictions that will promote efficiency in the recruiting process and control the intrusion factor.�

The Management Council will again debate the issue at its April meeting. In the meantime, Council members are asking administrators to respond to the Ivy Group proposal. To read the proposal, go to: www.ncaa.org. Click on “Legislation & Governance,� “Rules & Bylaws,� and “Division I� under “Proposed Legislation.� The proposal number is 2006-40.

By Staff

Basketballs will still bounce and nets will still swish this summer in Michigan gyms, but for one week during the three-month vacation, the sound of high school coaches giving advice to their players won’t be heard at all. Beginning this year, the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) will institute a seven-day “dead period,� during which coaches won’t be permitted to have contact with their players in an athletic setting.

Jack Roberts, Executive Director of the MHSAA, says mounting pressure on high school student-athletes necessitated the break. “We’re trying to respond to increasing concern about the loss of family time for coaches and athletes, as well as the decline of multi-sport athletes,� he says. “Whether the demands are subtle or direct, student-athletes are pressured to focus on one sport for most of the year, if not the whole year. A coach can directly or indirectly require students to play over the summer if they want to make the team, and we want to relieve that pressure.�

The dead period doesn’t keep student-athletes from playing, it just forbids coaches from practicing with their athletes. “We try not to tell individual students what they can or can’t do,� Roberts says. “If kids want to play during the dead period, they may, but no one can tell them they have to.�

Just as in many other states, summer AAU leagues are popular in Michigan and high school head coaches often double as AAU coaches. It’s common for them to have their own high school players on their AAU team, so in essence, they coach their players year-round. Under the new rule, for at least one week, any Michigan AAU coach who coaches his or her own players will have to hand the reins over to an assistant or cancel practice.

“My players could play in one of the big AAU tournaments over the Fourth of July weekend, and as long as I’m not with them, it’s fine,� says Tom Valko, Head Coach at Marysville High School. “Some AAU tournaments and summer team camps are going to have to adjust because most schools are picking the July 4th week to have the dead period. I usually take my team to a camp right around July 1, so we’ll have to adjust accordingly.�

Valko, who is also on the Board of Directors of the Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan, has no problem making the adjustment, and says he believes a lot of schools already give their athletes a break over the summer. “What the MHSAA did was formalize it as a rule,� he says. “The rule will only hold as well as the schools enforce it, though. It’s a matter of self-policing. If a high school has a strong athletic director and good coaches, the dead period will be supported, managed, and followed. And if not, it won’t.�

The MHSAA decided to let each high school choose which seven consecutive days would constitute its dead period, and most schools have opted for the Association-recommended week that includes the Fourth of July. “A large segment of our membership wanted to mandate the same seven days for everybody, but we wanted to give schools a choice,� Roberts says. “We will survey the schools next year about the dead period, and if that week was chosen overwhelmingly, we may mandate it statewide.�

Top coaches share their advice for understanding and working with performance plateaus—both those you expect and those you don’t.

By Dennis Read

For most athletes, plateau is a four-letter word. In their minds, they should improve after every workout, and every meet should bring a new PR. As a coach, though, you know that performance gains don’t come in a straight line—there are many times during the season when performances should flatten and hold steady for a while. Rather than signaling a problem, plateaus are often simply part of the training plan.

On the other hand, there are times when an athlete’s lack of improvement actually signals that something has gone wrong. Rather than being a healthy plateau on the way to the next breakthrough, level performances over a long period of time can be a sign of overtraining, psychological roadblocks, or even an undetected illness.

In this article, we’ll take a close look at plateaus, both good and bad. In the case of a planned plateau, we’ll offer ideas for teaching athletes that patience is the name of the game. In the case of a plateau that is really a roadblock in disguise, we’ll provide the training tools for breaking through.

Part of the Process
When an athlete’s performance levels off, it can be frustrating for both the athlete and coach. However, the first step in understanding plateaus is realizing that they often represent a normal phase in the training progression.

“Everybody plateaus,� says Rick McGuire, Head Coach of Men’s and Women’s Track and Field at the University of Missouri. “Coaches have yet to find a training system where results are ever onward, upward, further, higher, faster, and better. Plateaus are just part of the deal.�

Vern Gambetta, President of Gambetta Sports Training Systems in Sarasota, Fla., and a co-founder of the USA Track and Field coaches education program, likens plateaus to the landings on a staircase. “You go up a flight of stairs and there’s a landing, which is where you stabilize your performance,� he says. “Then you go up another flight of stairs to the next landing. It usually takes about four flights of stairs before you reach your peak performance, so there can be three or four lengthy plateaus.�

Plateaus are also an inevitable part of the mental adaptation to training. According to sports psychologist Keith Henschen, Professor in the Department of Exercise and Health Science at the University of Utah and consultant to USA Track and Field, plateaus result in part from the brain assimilating new information.

“When we’re learning, it takes time for the mind to digest information,� he says. “Although we may feel we’ve mastered a task, it takes a while for the brain to finish processing everything, so we see a plateau. And you’ll see that happen more with the elite athlete because it takes so much longer for them to improve just a little bit compared to a novice athlete who can improve a lot over a short period of time.�

Waiting It Out
It’s one thing for a coach to be comfortable with an athlete’s plateau, and another thing to help the athlete accept the situation. For McGuire, education is the key to helping his athletes have patience through a plateau. He teaches them that, from a physical standpoint, plateaus are a necessary component of great gains.

“I explain that if we were always rising to the next peak, we’d have to do a lot of resting,� he says. “That wouldn’t give us as much time to build more biomotor capability to put in the storehouse of our bodies. Then we wouldn’t have as much capability available in that storehouse when it came time to deliver the next peak, so the peak wouldn’t be as big.�

Part of the challenge, McGuire says, is that society conditions athletes to fight plateaus. “Society teaches us to demand immediate greatness, and when that doesn’t happen for an athlete, they ask, ‘What’s wrong with me? Have I lost it?’� says McGuire, who has a PhD in sports psychology and is an Assistant Professor in Missouri’s Department of Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology. “So we have to fight the messages from society that tell our athletes to hate the plateau.�

To do that, McGuire often uses a concept from a book by George Leonard titled Mastery. “The book isn’t about sports, although the author uses some sport metaphors and examples,� McGuire says. “It’s about people trying to be highly effective in their lives and applying themselves in a way that allows them to be masters of their fate and their own excellence.

“One of Leonard’s concepts is ‘Love the Plateau,’� he continues. “Now, most people hate the plateau. They want to get off the plateau, so they fight it. But as a coach, the idea of loving the plateau makes sense to me.�

A large part of McGuire’s discussions with his athletes involves teaching them to love the plateau. “I tell them this doesn’t mean they have to be satisfied with where they are,� he says. “It simply means we know plateaus are part of what leads us up the path to the big peak we’re aiming for. Our intention every day is to work hard doing things that will allow us to be better tomorrow than we were yesterday. But we aren’t going to see that better tomorrow in new PRs every day. And since we know that there will be plateaus, we’re going to do smart things while we’re there, and we aren’t going to beat ourselves up during the process.

“We spend a lot of time discussing this approach starting with our first meeting,� McGuire adds. “That way, when athletes find themselves on a plateau, they understand what’s happening and think, ‘Oh, this is what Coach is talking about.’ And I’m there telling them, ‘Don’t get frustrated. This is exactly what we want to happen. This is the plateau just before the big peak.’�

Lou Duesing, Head Coach of Women’s Track and Field and Cross Country at Cornell University, also believes that coaches need to set the right tone when an athlete finds themselves in a holding pattern. “It’s important to be positive and not to panic,� he says. “Athletes reflect the personalities of their coaches, and if they see coaches panicking about a plateau, they’re likely to follow suit.�

Some athletes accept plateaus more naturally than others. McGuire has a special message for athletes who fight a plateau. “I tell them, ‘You can be frustrated. You can be depressed. You can put on a face like the world is going to come to an end because you didn’t set a new PR in the long jump last night. But it’s only going to make jumping farther more difficult,’� he says. “‘If you want to be great, you don’t have the luxury of not using each minute at practice most effectively to lead you to the next breakthrough.’�

Unplanned Plateaus
Patience and education are the solution to many plateaus, but sometimes a plateau has gone on longer than expected and despite following the training plan and working hard, the athlete never reaches the expected peak. There’s no hard and fast rule for how long is too long when it comes to plateaus. Training age, event, and the training plan itself are only some of the factors to consider when evaluating a plateau’s length.

In general, if a plateau has lasted longer than you expected and you can’t identify a flaw in the training plan, it’s time for a deeper assessment. The first step is ruling out the common causes that can keep an athlete from making a breakthrough, starting with the physical. Sometimes this begins with some quick questions for the athlete. Other times, it may require an outside medical evaluation.

“When a plateau lasts longer than we’ve planned, we begin by checking to see whether something physical is getting in the way,� McGuire says. “We look for fatigue resulting from lack of sleep, poor diet, or low iron stores through a blood test—particularly with endurance athletes.�

McGuire has observed that when an athlete is stuck, often the first inclination is to assume a psychological block. But addressing psychological issues before eliminating possible physical causes can be counterproductive. “The athlete may have something mental going on, but if not, we’ll be wasting our time. In one case, I discovered that an athlete I was working with to break a plateau had Graves’ disease, and boy were we glad we checked.�

When other physical causes have been ruled out, overtraining can be an explanation for an extended plateau. “The number one red flag for overtraining is difficulty in recovering and malaise,� Gambetta says. “When an athlete is on a positive plateau, the energy levels and the bounce are still there but the results just haven’t come yet. With overtraining, if you watch the athlete’s body language, you’ll see an overall feeling of not wanting to train.�

Overtraining can negatively influence both an athlete’s emotional state and physical well being. “There’s a direct correlation between the amount of physical work an athlete does and their eagerness to work,� says Craig Poole, Head Coach of Women’s Track and Field at Brigham Young University and a professor in sports psychology. “Overtraining can depress an athlete’s ability to psychologically prepare for the max efforts he or she is trying to achieve.�

In addition, plateaus in meet performances can occur when an athlete is working too hard in practice. “I worked with an elite distance runner who was achieving really good training marks in practice, but he was doing so by giving competition-level effort in practice every day,� Gambetta says. “He had a huge competition plateau, because he was basically competing five days a week in practice and then trying to compete again on Saturday. You have to make sure that there is a recognizable difference between training effort and competition effort, and you can’t just look at the times the athlete records. You have to see if they’re really straining to reach a time or if they working at the proper level to achieve it.�

Overtraining can also result when athletes take it upon themselves to do extra work in an attempt to break through a plateau. “Some kids, especially distance runners, are perfectionists who sneak in workouts beyond what they really should be doing,� Poole says. “If a coach isn’t aware of the extra work they’re doing, he or she won’t have all the data needed to make an accurate judgment about what’s going on. If you suspect this might be the case, you may have to bring them into your office and ask them directly whether they’re doing extra workouts on the side.�

Once physical causes have been ruled out, there are some psychological aspects to consider. Duesing often finds that when an athlete cannot break through a plateau, it’s because they don’t truly believe they can hit the higher mark. “I constantly tell our athletes that limitations in sports are self-imposed,� he says. “You can always find a hundredth of a second. Once you believe that—not just cognitively, but in your heart as well—you open a door to continued improvement.

“Let’s say their dream is to run a sub-five-minute mile,� Duesing continues. “If you really press them on it, they may say, ‘I really don’t know that I can do it.’ They impose that limitation on themselves, if not consciously then subconsciously. They see it as just a dream, and if they don’t believe they can do it, they probably won’t.�

The Next Peak
Fortunately, with all the different ways for athletes to put themselves onto undesirable plateaus, there are even more ways to help them break them. A common way to overcome a plateau is to have the athlete stop whatever they’re doing in favor of doing something else.

“If an athlete is doing everything right and it’s just not happening for them, I have them get away from their particular event for while,� McGuire says. “There is no magic answer to how long ‘a while’ is. It might be two or three practices or a couple of weeks.�

However long the break lasts, the idea is the same: Give the brain a chance to process all the information it has been flooded with. “Athletes in training are exposed to a lot of motor neural information through their kinesthetic senses, listening to people describe what they should do, and watching others do it,� McGuire says. “The body takes all this information and integrates it into a high jump, a hurdle, or whatever the event is. Athletes can put so much pressure on themselves that they’re on motor neural overload—their sensory motor neural filter gets clogged up and can’t separate good information from bad. If we want to keep the good stuff, we have to let the mind purge the bad stuff. So we halt the flow of information for a while by doing something completely different.�

Duesing has even had an athlete change events for an entire season to break an unwanted plateau. “I once had a miler who was really in a rut,� Duesing says. “I knew he had done some intermediate hurdling in high school, so in outdoor track I moved him to the steeplechase. It was really different in terms of energy system usage and it was fun for him, so it got him away from the stale feeling he had when running the mile.

“He came back the next year and knocked about eight seconds off his mile time,� Duesing says. “He had been away from the mile long enough that he forgot his bad habits, not just physically but also mentally. Plus, in order to run the steeplechase well you have to be strong. And it turned out adding strength was the key to him improving his mile time.�

Most athletes don’t need to take a full season away from their main event to get back on track, so McGuire has a wide range of alternatives. “I might just take out the skill development portion of a practice,� he says. “I’ll have them do a warmup, some speed drills, their weightroom workout, and then go home.�

A plateau is also a good time for film review, as long as it’s positive. “You want to show athletes film from when they had great days,� McGuire says. “This is not the time to examine mistakes. This is the time to filter the system. It’s not usually my first choice, because watching film doesn’t get you completely away from the activity, but if you’re looking at good performances, it can be a positive thing.�

Gambetta likes to change various elements of the training program. The most common changes involve adjusting training volume and intensity. Although load can be increased or decreased, it’s best to not change by more than 10 percent from one training period to another. Similar adjustments can be made to intensity when a change is needed.

“As the athlete accumulates training over the years, I’m more prone to go toward higher-intensity and higher-quality work while cutting down on the volume,� Gambetta says. “But at younger training ages, the training hasn’t accumulated, so you can give them slightly greater workloads at various times.�

Another area that can be easily tweaked is rest, both within workouts and between workouts, especially if overtraining may be a factor. But Gambetta warns that just because some rest is good, more is not necessarily better.

“There’s a traditional tendency to overwork and under-recover,� he says. “But right now, rest and recovery are the buzzwords in training, and I’m beginning to see people resting too much and not working enough. Recovery is really important, but only if you’ve done the work first.

“Don’t forget about rest within a workout,� Gambetta continues. “Often, we don’t provide adequate rest between sprints and throws and jumps in practice and that can have a leveling effect on performance.�

Beyond the old standbys of volume, intensity, and recovery, Gambetta also likes to tinker with training modes. “For example, for squats you can use bodyweight, a weighted vest, a bar, dumbbells, jump squats, back squats, front squats, or overhead squats,� he explains. “The movements and muscles used are all similar, but the stimulus is varied enough that the body will perceive each exercise differently.�

Then there are changes to training sequences, such as swapping the order of plyometric work and weight work within a workout. “It’s important to have several different patterns of work,� Gambetta explains, “so that you can change the order of the primary stimulus for the days of the week. These sequence changes go a long way toward avoiding or breaking through plateaus.�

Gambetta says other smaller changes can include altering balance by having athletes perform on soft surfaces or barefoot, visual feedback by changing the workout environment, and kinesthetic awareness by going from a thin weight bar to a fat one or from a medicine ball to a power ball. “The key is that each of the changes must have a specific purpose and methodology,� he says.

When the problem is a psychological block, Duesing creates practice situations where the athlete can build the confidence needed to achieve the next breakthrough. “For example, part of running a fast mile is getting to the 1,200 mark in a time that’s going to have the athlete feel like they’re on pace without feeling like they have to bend over and rest,� he says. “So I’ll design some front-loading workouts that get them to that point. But you also need to back-load.So we design workouts that get them as tired as they might feel when they reach that 1,200 point, and then have them work at a faster-than-normal pace. That way, they know they’re capable of feeling that level of fatigue and still maintaining their pace.

“When we put them in those situations in practice, they see that they have what it takes physically and mentally to maintain the pace that’s needed,� adds Duesing. “They begin to really believe they can hit the new mark, and when that happens, a breakthrough is just around the corner.�

Sidebar: PREVENTING PLATEAUS
One surefire path to an unwanted plateau, according to Lou Duesing, Head Coach of Women’s Track and Field and Cross Country at Cornell University, is allowing athletes to do too much too soon. To avoid that pitfall, Duesing is careful to make sure athletes are leaving something in the tank early in the season, even if their natural inclination would be to train at a higher intensity.

“Sometimes the best approach is to hold people back early on so that what they’re doing later in the year is at a higher intensity than what they could do early on,� he says. “For example, our competitive season begins in January and ends in June, but January is really a pre-competitive stage. If an 800-meter runner has had a good fall and done their work over Christmas break, they’ll be fit, though not completely race sharp.

“If I gave them the opportunity, they could go out and run some fast quarters, and they could probably do so over a period of time,� Duesing continues. “But that brings them up to a certain level quickly and once they get there, where do they have left to go? So rather than have them run four to six quarters at 60, which they probably could do, I just keep them at 64 with short recovery so we’re working the endurance side of speed endurance. That way, when they start working at a little bit higher intensity, they’ll move forward and keep progressing from cycle to cycle. They won’t be stuck where they started, like they would have been if they were running 60s back in January.�

Dennis Read is an Associate Editor at Coaching Management. He can be reached at: dr@MomentumMedia.com.

By Staff

At the University of the Pacific, athletic administrators hoped a seat-naming program would raise enough money to cover the cost of seating in their new baseball stadium. They didn’t anticipate that in less than half a year, they would generate $160,000. The program’s initial goal has already been surpassed, and money is still coming in.

“When you talk about building a new facility, people usually think about targeting large donors,� says Head Coach Ed Sprague, a former major league all-star. “But with this program, we wanted to reach smaller donors. We thought nameplates on the seats would be a good way for young alumni, boosters, and community members to participate in building the stadium. And the response has been great.�

For $1,000, fans can engrave a seat located behind home plate, which, spread over five years, comes to 56 cents a day for the best seats at Klein Family Field. Or for $500, they can have their name engraved on one above the dugouts. Within the program’s first five months, fans named 205 of 889 available seats, which also includes the right to buy that engraved seat’s season ticket.

During this past season, the Tigers played most of their home games off-campus due to the construction, so the department kept the program relatively low-key, marketing the seat-naming opportunities through its Web site, an e-newsletter, alumni correspondence, and word of mouth. With the help of key baseball alums, nameplates have been used to honor parents, children, teammates, and former coaches. And with $2 million still needed to complete the stadium, marketers are planning to re-emphasize the seat-naming campaign in the coming months. If the department succeeds in selling nameplates for the remainder of the seats, they could raise an additional $500,000.

Cindy Spiro, Senior Associate Director of Athletics for Development, is planning to launch the next push at Pacific’s alumni reunion and continue through the close of the 2007 baseball season, when the school hopes to celebrate completion of the stadium. “One of the most valuable parts of this program is that it gives us the opportunity to talk to our young alums about philanthropy,� Spiro says. “This is a great way to encourage them to give that first gift back to the institution.�

“We want as many people as possible to be emotionally invested in our stadium, and I think it’s working,� adds Sprague. “There’s still more to be done, but we’ve built a beautiful facility and made a lot of people excited about what we’re doing.�

By Staff

As steroid use continues to be a hot button in baseball, New Jersey has become the first state to take the plunge into a full-fledged drug-testing program for high school athletes, following an executive mandate from former Acting Governor Richard Codey. In 2006-07, random steroid testing will begin for athletes in all championship sports.

The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) will carry out the testing plan, randomly testing about five percent of student-athletes whose teams qualify for postseason play in 2006-07. Postseason play in the state’s 31 championship sports involves roughly 10,000 athletes, so about 500 students will be tested in the program’s first year.

Codey created a task force in July 2005 to study the issue of steroid use in young athletes. The task force’s 18 members, which included high school administrators, professors of sports psychology and orthopedic surgery, and coaches, recommended a series of steps, including random testing, to address what it perceived as a serious problem.

“We looked at the statistics first,� says Bob Baly, Assistant Director of the NJSIAA and a member of the task force. “About three percent of high school seniors nationwide admit to having used steroids, and there’s evidence that the real number is closer to five or six percent. We have 240,000 athletes in New Jersey, so it’s not hard to do the math.�

The task force also noted that many student-athletes say steroids are very easy to come by. “They told us all you have to do is key in the right words on the Internet or know the right people around school,� Baly says.

The tests will look for around 80 substances in all, ranging from amphetamines to steroids. In accordance with the policy, any time an athlete tests positive he or she will immediately be declared ineligible for a period of 365 days.

The governor’s office gave the NJSIAA a $50,000 grant to pay for the first year of testing, but it’s yet to be decided how subsequent years will be paid for. A private agency will carry out the tests, and coaches at the targeted schools will not have any added responsibilities.

While the mandatory testing plan has drawn the most attention, it isn’t the only way New Jersey is addressing performance-enhancing substance use by high school athletes. Plans are in place for a steroid education program directed at the state’s elementary and middle schoolers, as well as ramped up educational efforts for coaches, athletic trainers, and school nurses. “Our athletic departments will continue to work with families, coaches, and student-athletes to educate them about the dangers of steroids,� Baly says.

By Staff

With the long debate over when to start the NCAA Division I season settled, it appeared there would be some smooth sailing ahead for major college baseball. Coaches and administrators reached a compromise on start dates: Beginning in 2008, the first date for practice will be February 1, and the first game will be no earlier than the third Friday in February.

But now a new set of storm clouds has appeared in a warning from the university presidents on the Division I Board of Directors: Teams will be playing far fewer games in the future if the sport’s academic performance doesn’t improve. With baseball posting the third worst Academic Progress Rate (APR), bettering only football and men’s basketball, the Board is worried that the newly adopted common start date—a month later than some teams opened in 2006—could negatively affect players’ academic performance by squeezing 56 games into a shorter time period.

The Board considered reducing the maximum number of regular season games to 52, but after much discussion and lobbying by members of the baseball community who said the causes of baseball’s low APR went deeper than the number of games in the season, it tabled the proposal. Instead, it called for a plan to improve baseball’s academic performance, while threatening far greater cutbacks in games if it fails.

The Baseball Academic Enhancement Committee has one year to develop a plan acceptable to the Board. Two years after that, the Board will revisit the question of cutting games if academic performance has not improved.

“Nobody is sure what compacting the 56-game schedule will mean academically,� says Dennis Farrell, Commissioner of the Big West Conference. “I think there was some relief that the board didn’t reduce the season initially, and now it’s up to the baseball community to prove that the compaction is not going to have a negative effect on academics.�

Dave Keilitz, Executive Director of the American Baseball Coaches Association, feels the answers lie more in structural issues and the culture of the sport than in coaches’ day-to-day management of their programs. “I think the majority of programs are doing a very good job of evaluating and recruiting the right type of student-athletes,� he says. “I also think coaches are doing a good job of working with their kids academically. But those factors are minimal compared to the bigger issues like transfer rules and a lack of scholarships.�

Baseball coaches have long complained that the limit of 11.7 scholarships is too low for a sport with rosters that typically include about 33 players. And since baseball players, unlike football and basketball players, can receive a one-time transfer exception that allows them to change schools and retain immediate eligibility, there’s little to keep a player from transferring if he thinks he is not getting enough playing time or can get a better offer elsewhere. The result is lost APR retention points.

“I believe we can come up with a great plan that will improve the APR dramatically,� Keilitz says. “Whether the Board is willing to make the changes we recommend remains to be seen. If nothing is done with scholarships or the transfer rule, it’s going to be very difficult to improve the APR.�

But changing the transfer exception is no easy task. A proposal to eliminate it for baseball was defeated at the 2006 NCAA Convention. Farrell says there are two schools of thought when it comes to the transfer exception. “One is that it’s too easy for kids to transfer, and when they do, the school’s APR takes a hit,� he explains. “The other school of thought is that the one-time exception at least holds the student-athlete accountable because he has to be academically eligible when he applies for the waiver. While you lose the retention point when a student-athlete transfers out, without the exception, you might lose both the retention and eligibility points.�

Which brings the argument back around to scholarship limits. “Under the present rules, it’s difficult to fault a kid for transferring if he only has a book stipend for one semester and he’s not playing,� Keilitz says.

He adds that in addition to scholarships and transfers, the plan could address the impact of the professional draft, time demands made on players, early signing periods that have players committing to college scholarships before they start their senior year in high school, and numerous other factors. “It’s not going to be easy to find a solution, but it’s our responsibility to sell it to the coaches and say this is best for all of college baseball,� he says. “At the same time, we have to convince the Board of Directors that it will be good for baseball academically.�

Any plan to improve college baseball’s academic performance will likely involve some compromises on coaches’ parts. “Some people are a little offended that we have to go through this because we don’t have the lowest APR,� Keilitz says. “We aren’t happy with our APR, but there are others who also have problems, yet we’re the only sport going through this right now.

“We have to come up with a good plan, and coaches have to buy into it, or we are going to lose games,� he continues. “Some changes may conflict with coaches’ individual beliefs, but it will boil down to deciding whether it is more important to abide by the plan and keep the number of games we have, or continue doing things the way we have been and lose a significant number of games.�

You want your players to dig down and get the most out of their weightroom workouts. So what is the fine line between pushing them hard and pushing them too hard?

by Vern Gambetta

Sometime in the 1500s, an English poet named Robert Herrick used the phrase “no pain, no gain� in his writings. He was conveying the idea that if you don’t work really hard at something, you won’t benefit from it. A good, noble phrase from a well-respected poet of his day.

Ben Franklin and, a little closer to home, Adlai Stevenson, also used the maxim with success. They, too, were promoting the idea of hard work.

More recently, “no pain, no gain� has been linked with athletics. Today’s coaches motivate their athletes with the phrase and it has become the mantra of the hard-working team.
The problem is that many coaches and players take the phrase too literally. For many athletes today, experiencing pain is linked to working out. They approach the weight stack with the assumption that a little hurt is what will get them to the next level.

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. For sure, proper training in the weightroom or on the diamond demands that players be pushed to their limits. And there is no doubt that a good coach can get players to accomplish things beyond what they ever thought possible. But achieving this does not mean you have to inflict pain. In fact, pain is a red flag that something is wrong with the workout.

Why Not Push It?
The main reason not to push your players to their threshold of pain is that it won’t help them achieve their strength and conditioning goals. To make gains in the weightroom, it’s critical to follow a progression. An athlete should not move to a higher weight until he has mastered the weight he is at. If an athlete has pain, his body is struggling to adapt and needs rest. If you push more weight on a body in pain, it will lead to more pain and no adaptation. It may even eventually lead to injury.

It is important to understand the various stimuli that cause an adaptive response to strength training and how they correspond to your specific goals. If the goal is to build mass, then volume is the stimulus. If the goal is to train the muscles to aid in performing specific tasks, then intensity is the primary stimulus. To make gains, it is necessary to achieve a certain stimulus threshold. This threshold is dependent on the individual and the objective of the training.

In addition, some workouts should be very difficult and others should almost seem easy. This ebb and flow of challenge intensity is essential for proper adaptation.

The question I always ask coaches when I am teaching at a clinic is: Are you making your players better, or are you making them tired? If you are just making them tired, I suggest you reconsider your approach. You need to continually keep the big picture in mind: achieving the training objective entails more than just pushing to pain at every workout.

Another reason not to push your athletes to their limit is that it can simply wear them out at a time when you don’t want them too tired. It is important to remember that the weightroom is only one facet of a player’s total preparation. If you expect them to peak in the weightroom, what will they have left for practice? And, more importantly, what will they have left when the umpire says, “play ball�?

I don’t know about you, but I want my players tough on gameday. That should be the goal of training. A thoroughly conditioned athlete who is supremely confident in his preparation will be mentally and physically tough. But an athlete can only go to the well so many times before it will begin to run dry. Push a “no pain, no gain� message in the weightroom, and you risk depleting that well and leaving the athlete with nothing in the tank for competition.

Know The Line
The obvious question, then, is: What is the line between working hard and not overdoing it during weightroom workouts? I tell my athletes they are like finely tuned race cars. To stay in top shape, they must work with high energy and push themselves. But just like race cars, they cannot be at the red line all the time or there will be a breakdown.

The test of work done in the weightroom is soreness. There is good soreness and bad soreness. Good soreness is soreness in the muscles involved in a particular movement, such as the glutes in squatting. If the glutes are sore after a heavy squatting session, that is good.

However, if there is soreness in the joints, that is not good. For example, if the knees are sore after squatting, that is a bad sign. It often means the training is being performed incorrectly.

In addition, soreness that persists is a red flag. The inability to recover for the next workout often indicates that the athlete is at red line all the time, or the workload was excessive. Soreness should dissipate after a good thorough warmup the next day.

An unexpected performance plateau is another sign that an athlete is doing too much. During a time when performance should be rising, a plateau or decline indicates that there is a problem. The athlete may very well be pushing too hard.

Holding Them Back
Even if your workouts have the proper progression and you’re asking your athletes about any soreness they are experiencing, you need to be on the lookout for those players who take the “no pain, no gain� mantra literally. There will always be athletes who want to go past their limits every day, and they need to be reined in.

As coaches we are teachers, and it is our job to show our athletes how to train. I certainly do not want to discourage an athlete from working hard in the weightroom—or anywhere for that matter—but I feel I must teach them that training is more than feeling the burn. It’s sometimes hard for a young athlete to think about the big picture, so I try to make it very clear where they are going and outline the steps they must take to get there.

The first thing I explain is that training is cumulative. Progress is not made through one heavy max session in the weightroom, but through the cumulative effect of many sessions over a period of weeks and months. I also talk about how workouts in the weightroom correlate to their performance. I tell them why and how a certain lift will help them on the field, and why overdoing it will hurt their performance. If they are very driven on a daily basis, I ask them to put that effort into performing their lifts with concentration and intensity—making their technique perfect and exploding at the exact right moment.

Another part of the solution is giving athletes strength and conditioning goals—the more individualized, the better. This provides direction and purpose to the training. It helps the athlete see each workout not as a one-time heroic effort, but as part of the big picture.

It is also important to provide a lot of feedback, especially for the very driven athlete who has formerly worked with a “no pain, no gain� coach. For this athlete, the hurt that comes from training may be seen as a form of feedback. If it hurts, they think that’s good, and it gives them the incentive to keep going. This is not an easy athlete to work with because in their eyes you are taking away the opportunity to get better. The solution is to provide this person with a lot of feedback and motivate them in different ways. Also, they must not be allowed any leeway in their workouts.

Testing is a great way to provide feedback to all your players, and show them they are achieving gain without pain. The tests should be carefully chosen to accurately reflect what is going on in training at the present time. Young, developing athletes, especially, want to see tangible progress. Testing reinforces the positive effects of proper training.

Some day-to-day solutions include providing close supervision and structuring the training away from big lifts. I have seen too many athletes get caught up in the moment and try lifts they had no business attempting. It should be clear what the protocol is every day, and coaches should circulate around the weightroom to ensure that athletes aren’t trying to do more than what is prescribed.

I know some coaches who make a conscious effort to downplay any competition over who can lift the most weight, and that tends to work well. One way they have gotten away from this is by not emphasizing one-rep maximums. Instead, they use three-rep maximums and project a one-rep max off of that. This can help.

Not A Punishment
Part of the problem with the “no pain, no gain� mentality is that it is ingrained in many sports. Coaches and athletes think: More is better and the more weight someone lifts the better, regardless of the technique (or lack thereof).

In addition, some coaches use workouts as a type of punishment. If you aren’t listening to the coach, you have to do 100 pushups. But training is not punishment, and it should not be thought of as such. It is an opportunity to get better.

If we can shift our thinking in these two areas—more is not always better and training has a specific purpose—then the “no pain, no gain� school of thought will have a lot less credibility. And our players will, ultimately, make the most gains.

A version of this article has appeared in our sister publication, Training & Conditioning.

Vern Gambetta is the President of Gambetta Sports Training Systems in Sarasota, Fla., and a frequent contributor to Coaching Management.

Sidebar: Legally Speaking
Here’s one more good reason not to push your players to the point of pain during their workouts: It can result in injury. And injuries that may have been preventable can lead to lawsuits.

Two years ago, Scott Koffman, a former pitcher at Brigham Young University, filed a $9.2 million lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the school and one of its strength and conditioning coaches, claiming a weight-training injury ended his hopes of playing professionally. The suit said the pitcher suffered three herniated disks in September 2001 after being forced by the coach to lift too much weight.

While performing an elevated leg press, Koffman says that he tried removing some weight from the press and was stopped by an assistant strength and conditioning coach who called him a vulgar name, added another 100 pounds, and ordered him to lift. The lawsuit indicated that Koffman suffered the injury on the first repetition he attempted.

Although Koffman participated in 16 games during the season following the injury, he says the pain eventually became too severe to continue his career. He claims it also affected his ability to study, causing his grades to drop. Once drafted by the Baltimore Orioles, Koffman says he is no longer able to be even moderately active and that he will be affected physically and financially for the rest of his life.

In February 2005, BYU and Koffman settled out of court, though terms were not disclosed. School officials claim they provided Koffman with adequate medical care, although they have not commented on the strength coach’s actions.
— R.J. Anderson

When losses start piling up, self-doubt is sure to follow. Should you change your approach? How can you keep your athletes from growing frustrated? Here, a Hall of Fame high school coach offers advice for getting the most out of a losing season.By Lem Elway

I don’t like to lose. I don’t even like to write about losing. But we’ve all been through it—having a losing season that doesn’t turn around no matter what you do.

In today’s world, with parents scrutinizing your every move, you can’t just grit your teeth through a bad year. In fact, a sub-par season needs to be handled with as much care—if not more—than a winning season.

Losses usually lead to questions and doubts: Should I alter my approach? Set new rules? Change my expectations? How do I keep athletes from getting frustrated? How do I keep them from losing confidence in me? Should I start playing younger players and looking ahead to next year? How do I respond to the complaints of parents and fans? And how do I make sure I don’t lose my job? Your answers and actions will make a huge difference in how things turn out.

Check In With Yourself
It is important to realize that losing is not an indictment of your coaching ability. However, the way you react to losing can be. When losses pile up, your values and leadership will be exposed in a new way. How you respond to adversity will show those around you what you’re really about.

That’s why the first step to take when you start losing is to review your coaching philosophy. If you have a written philosophy, re-read it. It will help remind you why you coach, and for most of us, it’s not only about winning. Staying true to your coaching philosophy is paramount to keeping the situation positive.

Here are three critical areas that will define who you are during a losing season:

Consistent Expectations: During a losing season, it can be tempting to lower your standards for player behavior and work ethic. However, your players stand to gain nothing from you lowering your expectations. If you expect them to get to practice 10 minutes early every day when the team is winning, they should continue to do so when they’re losing. If you give out an award in practice every week to the player who works hardest, you should continue doing it, even if it feels like that hard work isn’t paying off.

Emotional Control: For both players and coaches, keeping emotions in check becomes more difficult when the losses keep coming. But this is the time when your leadership and maturity are most needed to set an example for your athletes. Take the time to go over your rules on behavior more frequently than usual, and don’t hesitate to quickly call players on any negative actions.

Staying Positive: It’s extremely easy to feel negative about your players and yourself when the losses pile up, and you need to fight this every step of the way. Every word out of your mouth and all your body language needs to convey that you have not lost hope.

It’s up to you to continue hustling, being enthusiastic, and bringing energy to practices and games. You must be as excited as ever when something good happens and present nothing but positive encouragement when things are not going right.

Examine your words and your tone of voice. Yelling is not an acceptable way to correct players, nor is foul language. Be a teacher and explain in a confident voice the mistake that was made. Every time you open your mouth, something constructive should come out.

Evaluate Why You’re Losing
A key part of getting through a losing season is making sure athletes and parents do not lose confidence in you. The best way to ensure this is to continually evaluate why the team is losing and try to turn things around.

Let your athletes and their parents know that you are constantly analyzing everything the team does to make whatever changes are needed. Break down every game and figure out what went wrong and what went right. Know what your athletes are doing well and what they need to improve on. Are there problems with concentration, technical skills, or communication? Have you neglected to teach them something? What will you do in practice to work on those problems?

I am a firm believer in the motto, “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link,� and when we’re losing, I ask myself if there is a weak link in our hitting or fielding. I use statistics and performance analysis to find areas that need improvement. Then, I work with those athletes to improve their skills, or I increase the number of athletes working at the position so I can make a change if necessary. Either the athlete gets better or I alter the lineup.

Throughout all these evaluations, I make sure I am communicating well. After games, I talk to players about what caused the team to lose and what we need to do to improve. I post production sheets on the locker room bulletin board so my athletes can see the facts of their performance, and I let them know that I am evaluating them on their hustle, teamwork, and attitude.

I also ask them to evaluate themselves using one question: Did you give 100-percent effort today? If they can answer yes, then I feel we are achieving our goals. Each athlete needs to answer this question for himself, not for me or anyone else.

At the same time, I emphasize that we’re all in this together. I try to create the feeling that everyone must learn from each other’s mistakes in a constructive manner. I also emphasize that comments on individual mistakes are not to be taken personally. I try to convey the idea that figuring out what’s going wrong and how to change it is a fun, dynamic process.

Tough Decisions
Once you’ve determined why your team is losing, you may be faced with some difficult decisions. The most important thing is for you to be able to justify your actions in whatever you do, because sometimes, you’ll need to make tough decisions. Here are some big questions that can arise:

Individual vs. Team: What if there’s one athlete who is trying to play at the next level but the team is hindering him? I still base everything we do on team goals—not on the individual. I let my best players know that for them to get the recognition they’ve worked for, the team must be successful. If they continue to work hard on an individual basis, the team will succeed. The message from the coach must be that both goals are intertwined.

I also remind athletes that if they want to play at the next level, the college recruiters who come to watch them are watching everything they do. If they see an athlete only trying to impress the recruiter and not being a team player, that will not make a good impression.

Sitting Seniors: What if you decide that a senior on the team is a weak link? I always convey to seniors that they should be the strongest members of the team, but if they aren’t the best at their position, they should expect no favors. If an underclassman begins to play better than a senior, I will not hesitate to start the younger athlete. However, I always have factual information to support my decision and I often make it a gradual transition.

I’ve also learned that, during these changes, it is critical for a coach to protect the younger player from abuse from the older player. This can be an emotional time for a senior and his or her parents, who are faced with losing their role and stature on the team. This should never be underestimated, and the coach must communicate well and offer compassion and understanding.

When Players Quit: Some players are not able to deal with losing and may decide to quit the team during the season. As a coach, be ready to deal with that possibility. Be aware some will go quietly, while others will make a scene. Some might also direct their animosity toward you. In this situation, always take the high road in your reaction. It is imperative that your team is ready to regroup quickly and move on with the players who have decided to remain.

If possible, I try to talk to every kid who quits to find out why. I think about their reason and if I, as a coach, feel I did something to make them quit, I try to change that part of my coaching. If the reasons for quitting come down to simply not having the right attitude, I wish them the best and tell them I’m glad they were part of the program.

Make It A Learning Experience
We’ve all heard the saying, “You can learn more from losing than winning,� but the operative word there is can—this learning doesn’t happen automatically. You need to seize the teachable moments of losing.

To start, I always ask my players how they want to be remembered when they leave high school. Do they want to be the athlete who fought through adversity, or the athlete who helped bring the team down? I explain that one’s true character comes out during tough times, and if they can hold their heads high while losing, they’ll know how to hold their heads high when they experience adversity in their adult lives. If they can hold onto a “never give up� attitude in sports, they will go far in anything they choose to do.

We also talk about how losing can bring us together or tear us apart. One season I started with seven seniors who had minimal varsity experience from the previous year. Over the season the players developed togetherness and support for each other, and the team won the league championship. The energy created by hard work fueled everything.

Communication is key to the learning process. I make sure there are times when athletes can voice their frustrations, either one-on-one with me or in a group. They need to be able to express themselves, and I let them know they can talk to me to let off steam. At the same time, they know that they will be held accountable for what they say to the whole team.

What do I do when an individual athlete or an entire team has endured a particularly dismal outing? I believe it is good for athletes to face the reality of “being down,� especially when their performance has created the situation. If young people can be held accountable and accept responsibility for their part in a loss, they are learning a wonderful life lesson. If they can say, “I wasn’t giving 100-percent effort today� or “I botched the play,� they can figure out how to change their attitude or skills to help make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Through it all, I always try to teach the ultimate lesson—that sports are fun, no matter what the score is. I always want to accentuate the positives and show interest in the present. We laugh and joke every day. Win or lose, you need to keep true to your philosophy and your role as a mentor of young people.

A version of this article has appeared in our sister publication, Coaching Management Basketball.

Sidebar: Job Security
The worst part about a losing season is that it gives people license to question your decisions and objectives. I can think of several coaches who posted continuous winning seasons, had one losing season, and were suddenly faced with all sorts of questions that led to their firing.

The key to avoiding the one-bad-season axe is to communicate with parents and administrators and educate them about what you’re trying to do. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that it is not only important to mold players, but also their parents, who will be very vocal if the team begins to lose.

For example, I hold a clinic just for parents, where our coaching staff presents the fundamentals we are trying to teach in our program and explains why we teach techniques the way we do. We periodically have pre- and post-event get togethers and dinners for team members and families, and I regularly send group e-mails to update parents on schedule changes and team notes. When the team is losing, I intensify this communication, spending even more time talking to parents about what we are trying to do.

During a losing season, it can be tempting to hunker down, avoid contact, and communicate less than usual. Fighting this urge can earn you a new level of respect from parents and administrators. It can also help you keep your job.

A member of the Washington State Coaches Hall of Fame, Lem Elway is Head Baseball Coach at Black Hills High School in Tumwater, Wash. His first book, The Coach’s Administrative Handbook, has recently been published by Coaches Choice.