Parents & Coaches- Capture & Preserve Memories

Any of you have followed my blog, realize I have been doing research on past boys and past girls basketball teams. To do the research, I have go to our wonderful public library to look at old newspaper articles. It is an amazing experience to sit down and go through an entire season at one sitting. 

Several weeks ago when I was doing research on the 1960 team, it struck me how much I could find in the paper. There were box scores with points, free throws, rebound leaders, and fouls. While they were blurry, there pictures and I got a sense the size of Bob Coe and Bumpy Nixon. There was an article describing players being disciplined and players being injured. For people from that era- tons of memories. 

It struck me as I was going thru the material on the 1960 team, that I can find more information about a team from 75 years ago than I can find from last year’s team. Many communities are in the same boat but there just is not local sports coverage in newspapers any more. 

As I write this, I am researching about the 1999 girls basketball team. In the library, I had access to 96 articles written by the Register-Mail staff that season, and 103 pictures published by the Register-Mail. I am guessing that last season there may have been 8-9 articles about the girls basketball team in the Register-Mail. 

Coaches and parents in today’s world must figure out ways to produce material to try to capture the events of the season, and must come up with ways to store information to reflect back on in 20 or 30 or more years. There are probably some very good tech options available that are beyond my expertise, but I would like to share some of thoughts on capturing and preserving sports memories.

Newspaper Clippings- Articles are few and far apart, but when an article is written figure away of capturing the article. 

Coach’s Game Summary- Coaches can either create paper copies of games stats with a game summary, or put them on a website or social media. This is an example of what Coach Owens did after every game clear back in the 1970’s. He gave each player a set of stats and wrote a simple game summary.

Pictures Are Free- It is not like the old days, pictures are free. Take pictures of warmups, game action, scorebooks, visiting gyms, and post game. And ask your player to share some pictures of team social events- team dinners, road trips, etc. You do not have to keep them all, but have enough to choose from. 

Keep Stats and Handouts- These are copies of stats for Lily Furrow to remember swimming and track results. For basketball a player can get game stats off of Hudl.

Coach Generated Yearbook- It maybe hard for the coach to find lots of material to include in a yearbook without newspapers, but a coach could put a book together with season score, season stats, individual game stats and individual game summary like Coach Owens made. A book could be a good source for future information.

Screenshots- There may be pictures and material a coach puts on social media or other parents put on social media. A screen shot can be taken and then save the pictures. 

Shutterfly Books- A parent, Heather Herchenroder, created a book the team gave me upon retirement. She has created the same for her daughter’s each year, as has Valerie Furrow. I have no idea of the process but it is obvious that you can create pages with pictures and text. 

Memory Book- As part of a coach generated “yearbook,” the coach can ask players to share memories. Thom Sigel told me that he asked each player 4-5 questions about the season for them to share short or long favorite memories, most exciting games, and other questions. I have included a few of the memory pages from our 1999 team.