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The Best Coach Ever

February 5, 2013

In the fall of 2004, another of the inductees with my father to the first-ever Hall of Fame Class of Stevens Point (WI) Area Senior High School was Rick Reichardt, arguably the best male athlete the community ever produced. Rick played four sports in high school, both football and baseball at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and on two Major League Baseball teams.

In his own acceptance speech that evening in 2004, Rick said that my dad was the best coach he ever had.  Well, Dad was merely Rick’s Little League baseball coach.

That’s remarkable in and of itself.  What’s more remarkable is that Dad never played organized baseball.  He never developed the skills of the game. Yet Rick said Dad was his best coach ever.

Eventually, I’ve figured out Dad’s “secret of success.”  Dad didn’t coach a sport.  He coached people.

Our just-published winter issue of benchmarks is devoted to coaches like this and to the coaching profession. Read it here.

Current Events

November 3, 2017

This is the ninth year that I have been posting blogs twice a week – each Tuesday and Friday. A recent project required I go back through the postings of the eight previous years; and a sidebar of that project is this posting.

I rediscovered that in the fall of 2009, I was writing about topics that remain current today. For example,

  • August 18 – What new sports may be in the future of high school athletics?

  • August 25 – The prospects of 8-player football.

  • September 4 – Baseball pitching rules.

  • September 8 – Video streaming.

  • October 6 – Protection from head injuries.

  • November 17 – Foreign students.

  • November 20 – Football scheduling.

  • November 27 – Football Playoffs.

And on several occasions over the first six months, the topics were problems in school finance and the financial pressures on school sports, reasons for various eligibility rules, changes in playing rules to promote participant safety, tournament classification, and the need for stronger leadership on all levels of school sports.

All of these topics remain current. Proving once again, perhaps, that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Or, that there are no genuinely new topics.