High School Sports Thread
- Thread starter qwerty
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We're out of the loop these days with our kids being done with high school sports but the only coach we had that wasn't talking out both sides of his mouth on this was the swimming coach. Football was basically year round because of the expectation that you were running track and the summer workouts at the same time as baseball practice and games. Winter sports weren't "required" but they were definitely expected. Baseball workouts started in January but just to make it so you didn't have an excuse for not being there they scheduled them for 8PM during the week.
The swimming coach didn't care but most of those kids were doing short course and long course year round already.
My oldest' s Junior year when he was trying to do everything it was pretty common for him to go to his in season practice right after school, get home between 5:30 or 6, eat a sandwich and run to club swim practice for 2 more hours. Honestly it was a miracle he was able to keep his grades up that year.
Ames and Des Moines Christian are joining the LHC next year. The communication DCG sent out also said that Pella and Oskaloosa are leaving after the 27-28 year and Newton and Pella Christian are also actively looking for other options. DCG just moved up to 5A football this school year and am hearing that other sports will be moving up a class as well soon. It makes sense for DCG to join the CIML since they will already be playing those schools anyways. It's probably good competition wise too, DCG has pretty much been dominating state soccer for both boys and girls and the girls basketball team has been a state title contender most years recently. I don't see a reason why the state would force them to stay in the LHC when they are moving up a class level in sports and be competing against the CIML teams going forward.
What workouts were they doing in the off-season for football? My kids go to a fairly successful small school program and outside of weightlifting. That’s all they do in the off-season, well I guess a few agility drills but that doesn’t take very long and helps all sports.
Football has a year round strength and conditioning program. During the school year it's at 6:30 AM and it was a graded class. Technically it wasn't only for football but if you didn't play football they wouldn't let you in. Like I said it was also expected that you ran track even if you wanted to do one of the other spring sports. During the summer they still had daily weights and 2 or 3 days a week they had some sort of practice they called TIP (don't remember what that was exactly).
Most schools are going to be lifting at least 2 or 3 days a week during the summer, and then running plyometrics another one or two days. Generally you do 45 minutes of ply's the kids are sucking wind. Lots of bounding drills, short quick movements, then followed by longer runs to stretch out their legs, and then back to step drills.
Some schools are also doing 7 on 7 one or two nights a week for the QBs, WRs, and RBs, on offense and the LBers, and DBs on defense. Generally we used to run these for an hour or so on Sunday nights and then try to get into one or two 7 on 7 tournaments during the summer a Saturday or two.
That’s more than what the local school does. They have lifting and then agility with a little conditioning after the agility, sometimes substituting for it. That stuff helps for all the sports so I can’t really say it’s just football as non football kids are doing them also.
They used to have what they called captains practices on Sundays. For my kids, it was more just hanging out and maybe a smidge of running. They used to be more but then consider the time period that involved my two sons would be considered maybe the most successful run in the schools history.
Generally when you have better athletes and they start winning, they want to do more to continue winning. It's the schools that are struggling to win games that really have a hard time getting kids to buy into the importance of doing weight and plyo training.
My kid went to an A school. Summer baseball. Fall Baseball. Winter baseball. Spring baseball. Fall basketball open gym. Winter season. Spring open gym. Summer league. Football camps in the summer. 7 on 7 in the winter, spring and summer. Weight lifting all year. Oh yeah, track. It was ridiculous. Can't imagine being at a bigger school. I'm guessing he would have specialized by 8th or 9th grade. But who knows. All I know is that nobody in his school or conference were going D1 or pro. LOL..... But, there are some pretty competitive small town communities in Iowa.
Any coach worth a damn is teaching skills long past 9th grade, no matter the sport. If not, it will eventually catch up to them, and they won't be coaching long.
You are refining the skills that have already hopefully been taught at a younger age. You read stories about kids that starting playing a sport in high school, but most are super talented kids or have the size needed to get to a high level.
You look at a player like Biliew, scouts loved his ability to run the floor, but he never developed any type of shot other than rebound the ball and put it back on the glass. Which is why he has struggled for playing time in college.
The best programs, no matter the sport, continue to hammer the fundamentals in season and out of season at all levels. There will always be exceptions with freaks of nature that can get by on natural ability. Good coaches and good programs I have been around have always been about fundamentals (skills). Those that just run plays and call it practice will eventually run out of dudes and get passed by those that know how to develop a program.
You are always running fundamental drills through the season. The larger schools have the advantage that they can break kids up into position groups and work on these skills a few minutes each day which is just not possible at the smaller schools because you have so many two way players.
I remember going to a clinic once and we were talking to the DB coach from Newton when they were really good and he had all these great drills his players were doing every practice. Then he would have his first team unit going against the 2nd team offense, and the 2nd team going against the first team offense.
Great drills to use, but at a smaller school, we do not have time to run DB drills for 7 kids every day in practice, because those 7 kids are also the WRs and RBs on offense, and need to be practicing those skills as well,
We had something similar my freshman year for High School FB.
My summer was to valuable to me so I ended up not going out for FB my freshman year.
This isn't mean to be critical. I've been a head and assistant coach of multiple sports from Class A to 5A. It's always about skills and fundamentals. You can be a play calling genius, but if the kids don't have the fundamentals to execute the scheme (no matter the sport) , the play is dead in the water. Make the time. Find a way.
I coached at large schools in Texas and small schools in Iowa. We worked on skills/fundamentals all season. During practice. Even at little Iowa schools. Talking A and 1A schools. It's actually easier at the small schools since fewer kids means more reps.
Agreed. My practice organization was largely the same in Class A as it was in 5A. It looks different but coaching at every level is about development.
You are both saying the same thing, you have to work on skills and fundamentals, but at smaller schools, you just do not have the time to work on them as much as you can at the larger schools.
I can work lineman drills maybe one or two days a week at a 1A school, because those kids are working on D Line drills on other days. At a large school I get those same kids 4 days a week to work and improve on those drills. More reps, more practice and they improve more, because of the practice and reps.
