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.

Thinking of Don Quixote

October 10, 2017

The athletic transfer problem is not confined to high schools alone. Recently, the National Collegiate Athletic Association has had a work group studying the NCAA transfer rule for Division I institutions.

The problem has been of particular concern in Division I men’s basketball where more than 20 percent of scholarship players changed schools between last season and this.

The work group appeared to have narrowed its study to two options: Make every transfer student ineligible for one year; OR, Allow every transfer student immediate eligibility. And the second option seemed to have had the early momentum.

But last Wednesday, the work group announced that the proposal to grant immediate eligibility to transfer students who meet certain academic standards will not advance during the current NCAA legislative cycle. Two days later the report was corrected: there's still a chance for change by 2018-19.

Major college conference commissioners and NCAA leadership have surveyed the landscape. They see athletes arriving on their college campuses from an environment where, if they weren’t happy with a team, they changed teams.

Apparently, the non-school, travel team attitude is bigger than the NCAA may want to battle.

Yet here we are, thinking of how to wage war on athletic transfers in high schools.