Coaching and Youth Sports

Kid we played last week at Collierville was 6’6 300 lb OT going to play at TCU. He was playing attack in lacrosse. Meanwhile one of our players isn’t playing as his coach wants him to bulk up and just lift with football workouts this spring. Never mind the reason he’s being heavily recruited is his above average feet and agility gained from his years of lacrosse. And why wouldnt you want and in shape and quicker football player going into summer workouts where you have 3 months to gain weight. Makes no sense to me.

 

As someone not too terribly far removed from the competitive dog-eat-dog travel/HS baseball world, I’d highly recommend to you and your kids to somehow someway find time for a secondary sport.

Being plugged into the Middle TN baseball world my entire childhood, my teammates and I were exposed to Vanderbilt’s Tim Corbin various times over the years. Like clockwork every single time he spoke to us at whatever event/setting he would implore to us Nashville baseball guys to play another sport, especially football. He thought there was nothing better a young aspiring baseball player could do than to train and lift like a football player because in the end it made your swing more explosive and expands your defensive range. He’d preach how every sport out there can uniquely fortify your mental toughness. Would always talk about how all his best players ever like David Price, Sonny Gray, ect were typically multi sport stars.

And in my experience he was very much right. The eventual best HS baseball players in Middle Tennessee in my era all played either football or basketball as a supplement to their baseball. Hell just one anecdotal example here, but in addition to being a beast on the varsity basketball team Mookie Betts legit also was the best bowler in the entire state of Tennessee. Multi sports are the way to go. Plus the more sports you play, the more friendships and networks your kids will forge.

 

Mookie Betts was a bowler

 

He was/still is a beastly bowler. The best bowler in town growing up. He occasionally competes in PBA events. Bowled a 300 once in one of the PBA events he was in. He was excellent at anything he tried athletically.

https://www.mlb.com/news/mookie-betts-competes-in-pba-bowling-tournament

 

Bowling was a much sought after PE class back in the day when PE was a required class at UT.

 

Yep. And weightlifting, sandwiched between my military science class and self pace math where my self pace was to take all the tests for the semester in the last week.

 

I'm sort of glad that when I returned to UT after my 4 year military stint that PE was no longer required and we were still on the Quarter system. I was ecstatic that calculators had been invented.

 

I took golf. Jim Bob Cooter was in my class. Good times

 

Walking was mine (as if any UT student doesn’t know the joys of walking up hills both way to classes). One of those half a semester 1 hour mini classes. And my dumbass 19/20 year old self managed to make it one of my most shameful academic moments of my UT career by not even getting an A. All you had to do was show up, sign in, stretch, walk around campus/Neyland drive area, then return to home base by the intramural bubble to do a cool down stretch. Participating was all that mattered.

Got a B because for whatever reasons I had lazily skipped the maximum of two allotted classes already. Only to get dinged a 3rd time because halfway through our class walk down Neyland Dr that day I felt highly uninspired to finish the walk back across campus just to “stretch” only to have to walk all the way back across campus once again after stretching (my house in the fort then was much closer to Neyland Stadium than the intramural bubble). So I slowly faded to the back of the pack and dipped out to cut back towards the Fort. I thought I was successfully sneaky about it too until I opened up my laptop a few minutes later only to find an email from my “Walking teacher” informing me she caught me red handed. And therefore counted me as absent which deducted my final grade an entire letter grade by that point considering I burned through my other two skips already. I have to be one of the only humans in the history of UT walking classes not to get an A. Not my finest moment!

 

When tn lacrosse rankings come out next week, we have a chance to be overall #1 public division in state and maybe #1 overall with McCallie, MBA and Briarcrest likely top 5. Private schools really do have an advantage with their gyms, indoor facilities and fields. Our kids don’t have weight room access and can’t just go shoot on goals anytime and often have to share a field. Got a kid going to Michigan who is fun to watch. Michigan is a top 10 D1 program and his freshman little brother may be better. Got Hendersonville this week and Oakland.

 

FYI on the growth for you with younger kids, keeping in mind it’s a TSSAA sport in 2 years, I counted at least 25 programs in middle tn now. If schools are unable to field teams, schools can combine to field a team as Hendersonville/Beech do. More feeder programs are popping up and national lacrosse clubs/training coming to town and starting developmental programs. Kids who’ve played multiple sports who pick this up around 6th grade do well. Others may start later and play because it improves their feet for football and they get in shape.

 

I got a C+ in tennis. 9 am class fall semester. Let’s just say later on in the semester my attendance wasn’t regular as it got cold & rainy. Then the final exam was like 35 degrees and windy and the ball coming out of the machine was like a Mariano Rivera cutter. Also not my finest moment

 

And on top of that, he's even excellent at bowling!

 

In fairness to you tennis is at least is a lil more challenging of a UT PE course than walking is haha. Me getting a C+ in history of jazz-thinking it was just as easy/fun as history of rock and roll- is another UT academic moment I’m not exactly proud of.

 

Some rare people just have that kind of athletic gift that translates to whatever they try. Was something else growing up over the years witnessing and competing against him in athletic ventures. Was a sports god amongst the rest of us mortals.

 

Someone show me the foul.

 

That’s a pretty bad call just from who called it and where he was. No way he saw contact.

 

I'm no basketball expert but I didn't see a foul and looked like he traveled.

 

I don’t know if these guys get training or not or how they get trained, but I wish they’d train them to work their area of the court. If the guy with the best look doesn’t call it then no reason for the guy obscured or 50 feet away to call it and it happens all the time

 

Refs also should get together in calls like this to verify what was seen, including how the ball came out and the arms of the shooter.
Generally, when the pops up in the air when a player is going up and a defender reaches, it’s a foul as the arm is raked while going up and momentum of the ball continues. Ball goes towards the ground it’s all ball. Don’t really need to see much else.
Ball on ground and player going up with both arms unimpeded, but empty hands is not a foul.
I don’t know if refs nowadays even take this into consideration.