It is amazing to think we are halfway through January. We are in the midst of the toughest series of games in the winter with eleven straight days of basketball games. Our teams are playing great and kids are all improving. I hope to see you in gym for basketball bash next weekend if not before. Here are some great reads from the past week.
Every year when I attend the state track meet, I get exposed to communities from around the state. One of the communities that always impresses me in their support for each other is Eureka High School. They get community. So the best read of the week is the Cubs signing of Ben Zobrist and the story on his family and the community of Eureka that supports him. Most of the time we seem to read about the scoundrels of the sports world. But this story is the story of one of the good guys. None other than Joe Madden calls Ben Zobrist one of the 5 finest people on the planet.
Ben Zobrist's journey to Cubs a Family Homecoming of Sorts -- Chicago Tribune
Although I am always a little skeptical of the character of big time college coaches, I do want to point out that some of them have incredible life journeys. Clemson Coach Dabo Swinney had one of the most interesting. This is great profile in the New York Times. The selling point for me on Swinney was when he was a freshman at Alabama, he let his mom move in with him because she had no where else to go.
Clemson's Inspired Run Starts With Dabo Swinney -- NYT
So after talking about two good guys, lets get back to the bad guys. In the world of international track and field Thursday, many hoped for a cleaning house of the corrupt international governing body the IAAF. I was one of them. WADA (the World Anti-Doping Association) had exposed the IAAF's corruption and promised a bombshell report. For those of you who don't know what goes on in track its a strange situation. Everyone knows who is cheating, but no one seems able to consistently catch the cheaters. That encourages others to cheat. Some are now saying what has happened in track is much worse than what happened in cycling. And it turns out some of the cheaters were being protected by the International governing body. So there was great anticipation that on Thursday, WADA would clean house of the bums. That didn't really happen. Here is Bonnie Ford of ESPN's explanation.
WADA's latest report again lacks enough punch to solve bigger problem
I love Doug Lemov's Teach Like a Champion blog. Lemov sees that great teaching and coaching are the same. Here is this weeks post on Planning for Error. We don't talk about error enough, but in all of our coaching and teaching there are errors. Kids don't get things. Lets plan for error so we have the ability to adjust.
Annals of Coaching: Planning for Error -- Teach Like a Champion
Lastly, I leave you with a great post by Steve Magness this week. One of the things many coaches are guilty of is following a recipe. Recipe's are easy ways to plan out your practice, your week and your season for your athletes. However, recipe's have lots of issues. They do not address individual differences. And they also discourage creativity.
Losing Imagination -- Science of Running
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