The Way to Good Sports:: A Handbook for Starting Well in the Pleasant Craft of Coaching High School and Youth Sports

By Xlibris US

Dave Jenkins has put together some valuable information for any coach. The seasoned veteran can value the reminders within of why coaches do what they do and the importance of conducting ourselves as professionals. For the young coach it gives insight into the rigors of coaching, what is to expected along the way and how deal with the challenges coaching presents. It's an easy read full of anecdotal references and real life experiences Dave shares with us to make our transition to coaching "The Way to Good Sports".

Dave Brown
Head Football Coach and Strength and Conditioning Coordinator at Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose, CA, and the 49ers High School Football Coach of the Year for 2001

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493198931

Book preview

The Way to

Good Sports

A Handbook for Starting Well in the

Pleasant Craft of Coaching High School

and Youth Sports

David Jenkins

Copyright © 2014 by David Jenkins.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 04/24/2014

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

612230

CONTENTS

Preface

Reign Dance

Start Somewhere

Ready To Commit?

Heroes Welcome

Program Philosophy

Processes (Nuts And Bolts)

Toughness

Technique Mastery

Game Skills Mastery

Teamwork

So

Fundraising

Further Considerations

Notes

Favorite Sayings

Acknowledgements

Author History

To my Wife, the lovely Nancy,

and to those who have helped

to show me THE WAY

(Especially you, Ma)

A lug nut may seem like a little thing, but it’s not.

—John Wooden

The first couple years of coaching are often filled with great intentions but tons of mistakes. ‘The Way to Good Sports’ helps a new coach navigate those early years confidently and avoid the hidden pitfalls. Being able to draw on a seasoned coach’s experience like Dave’s, offers the type of insight that can make all the difference to your team.

Jared Muela, San Francisco 49ers

Youth Football Manager

Dave’s invaluable insight provides young coaches with a ‘what to expect’ when you’re coaching. Not everything works according to plan and it’s difficult to be ready when things don’t work out. Dave helps to plan for contingencies. He points out different ways of coping with the grinding stress we’ve all faced and will allow young coaches to excel on the learning curve faster.

Bob Spain

Former head football coach of the MVAL Champion

Irvington Vikings and the Dougherty Valley Wildcats

and currently an assistant principal at California High

in San Ramon, CA.

PREFACE

I got to the coaching vocation later in life. I figured that since I had been a training manager for a multinational equipment company that I could take on a little thing like coaching a youth soccer or football team. So I bought a lot of books and set sail. I had no clue as how to proceed and was fairly terrible at it. The kids wanted to move; they didn’t want to see me draw on a white board and listen to me talk about our brilliant game plan before practice. But I always had meetings before we put a plan into action at work. Yet, the kids were resilient, and we muddled into second place by the end of the season.

I got my first head coaching job in high school a year after I began teaching. I still had no outline on how to proceed save for instructions on when to collect emergency forms and how to hand out and fit football equipment. I had some coaching chops by then and a great mentor to learn from. However, I was so insecure that I felt the need to micromanage a few seasoned assistants and even yelled at them during practice as the team started to skid near the end of the year. I ended up alienating friends and held that position for just one season. If I had then been able to speak with one of my distant Lakota ancestors, he would have come back with the standard, Go to the mountain top and cry for a vision! I felt that lost. Luckily, my mentor continued to advise me as I moved on to another school. It took me three years before I earned my next shot as a head coach. During that time, I sought out well-respected local coaches and attended coaching clinics covering a variety of sports.

I have two file cabinets of notes, drawings and reflections regarding lectures, interviews, and practice plans. I emulated many of those coaches’ best practices until I honed their ideas and drills to fit my circumstances. So I kept what worked well for me and went on to generate drills and policies that worked for my specific player populations. It took me about seven years of coaching three or four sports a year to understand the depth of knowledge and the nuanced application of that knowledge to give each team that I have coached over the last four years the best shot at learning integrity, sportsmanship, and the value of focused effort.

That’s, uh, thirty-seven teams in a variety of youth and high school sports programs that I have head coached, co-head coached or assistant coached over the last eleven years. I can now spot skilled players and good coaching in a variety of sports. And I still attend clinics and seek out mentors, because it works for the benefit of everyone in my organization. But here’s the point. I could have served my players