"Got To Be Looking Forward"

The great thing about coaching high school is you always see young players coming up with potential. When you watch junior high players, they are always enthusiastic, play with passion, and have so much potential.

I always joke that whenever I go to a Churchill- Lombard game, somebody always says to me, "Coach, you have got to be excited about this group coming up." This year was no exception, I had three people say the exact version of this statement.

And I don't ever hesitate, "Yes, I am excited this group." That is why I am still coaching. It is easy to see the potential of the young players coming up.

Losing Human Interaction

The seeding for the Geneseo Regional were posted on the IHSA website yesterday. The results were:
1- Geneseo
2- Galesburg
3- Alleman
4- Dunlap
5- IVC

Before I begin to give my thoughts, let me make one thing clear-- based on IHSA seeding guidelines, Geneseo should have been the #1 seed, so that is not the issue of my thoughts.

Back in the old days, each coach attended the seeding meeting and you had to sit across a table and give your seeds. So if you were going to seed a team low, you had to say in front of that schools coach. In the years this method was used, there would be some times when one coach would raise a question about another coach's seeds. And then a coach had to defend their seeding. At one particular seeding meeting, a Peoria coach verbally attacked a coach from the Mid-Illini for the coach's seeding. It was heated and it had some profanity in it.

Jay Hatch- IBCA HOF

Congratulations to Coach Jay Hatch of Alleman on his selection to the IBCA Hall of Fame. Jay is most deserving of recognition. His teams have always been competitive. The highlight of his career was winning the Illinois State Title.

With 20+ years of service to Alleman, Jay is getting into the range of the Alleman legend, Don Morris who coached 30 years. Congratulations!!

Fulton High School

My brother sent this picture from the gym at Fulton High School, in Fulton Illinois. The banner at the ceiling is honoring my father's selection to the IBCA Basketball Hall of Fame. He coached in Fulton in the 1920's and '30's before moving to coach in Savanna in the '40's and '50's. It really appreciated that Fulton has chosen to recognize my father and to honor his memory!!

Mattoon- More Pictures

Three All-Tourney players.

Casey driving for big late basket vs. Salem.

First Year Coach

John Hanlon was captain of my first cross
country team in 1974. He was a ref at the
Mattoon Tourney this winter. 

My first coaching job at GHS was coaching boys cross country in the fall of 1974.

My understanding they had asked the last coach to leave over some conflicts. I was told one of three reasons was that he had chosen to purchase blue and gold sweats for the team, and blue and gold uniforms for the team. He was told if he wanted blue stuff to go coach at Quincy, Galesburg school colors were silver and gold with black.

You have to realize this was a different era, an era of great school pride, and of great dislike of Quincy. This was a time when we had pep rallies in the gym where the entire student body of 2200 kids jumped to their feet and started clapping when the band played Hi Yo Silver.

I was introduced to the returning runners one evening in late summer by the AD. It was nice of him to come and do this, but his intro was not what I had hoped for. He told the boys, "He has never run cross country, he doesn't know about it but he will work to learn." It was accurate but I wish it was not how I was introduced.

Mattoon Pictures

We had a good weekend on and off the court at Mattoon. It resulted in a championship after going 5-0. The following are some pictures- some from Mr. Henning and from Kathy Boydstun.

Haley, Shayli, & Sabrina receiving all-tourney awards- and Sabrina
with MVP award!

Bill Allen's Christmas Eve Letter

Christmas Card sent by William Allen
to his little brother Ben. 

The following is a letter written by Bill Allen to his Aunt Mabel on Christmas Eve, 1944. This would be Bill Allen's last Christmas, and it was to be spent in Germany away from his family. Bill Allen was my wife's uncle.     

                                                                                Germany           

                                                                                    Christmas Eve, 1944

Dear Mabel,

   I should be writing home tonight, but my mood is not conducive to uplifting homefront morale.  Maybe you’ll understand; so I’ll spend the evening answering the several letters which I’ve received from you lately.

  I’m thinking of all the Christmases of the past and what the day has always meant to our family.  Partly because I’m sentimental and it’s such a hard time of the year to be so far away from all those I love and the prospects of ever returning seem so remote and partly because I needed the emotional release after living under so much tension of late; I took advantage of the opportunity a while ago and sneaked off by myself and shed a great many tears.  I’m good for another year now and do realize that I’ve been one of God’s favored.  To be alive and whole is all one can ask for these days, and that is my blessing.

Championship Culture

The following is good article on the 6 Traits of a championship culture.

http://www.janssensportsleadership.com/resources/janssen-blog/6-key-components-of-a-championship-culture/

Championship Practices

I believe how you practice will determine how you play. Teams who are inconsistent usually are teams who practice in an inconsistent fashion- work hard one practice but not another, or work hard one drill but coast the next.

I believe how you play in the first three minutes of a game reflects how you practice.

When good teams go to practice, you focus on basketball. Coaches don't have to focus on motivation, players are motivated. Coaches and teammates don't have to try to figure out moods, players are focused. I have been fortunate to have many good "practice teams", who won many games as a result. One of our absolute best was our 1995 team- as coaches we focused on basketball, the players took care of effort and motivation and chemistry.

Success & Failure

From Fitness Girls

One Word by Jon Gordon

Even Willow knows the concept of One Word.

One of the best courses I ever took was Behavior Modification at the U. of Wisconsin-Madison. It was one of the most practical courses I have had. As anyone who is familiar with operant conditioning can attest- a lot of behavior modification is pretty common sense. The course provided me as a young teacher with ideas to make my classroom, my teams, and myself better.

One of the topics was on self-modification. The professor claimed self-modification is much harder to accomplish than the modification of other people. He went on to claim the problem for most of us when it comes to self-modification is we start out wanting too much change in ourselves. We know the target we want to reach and we try to get there today. So we have not been reading but we want to get to where we are reading 100 pages a day- we start with a plan of reading 50 pages. We want to lose 30 pounds so we set out to lose 5 pounds per week. Usually with the plans we start out great but we cannot maintain. This is the problem with the classic New Year's resolutions. The lesson was keep it simple and be patient.

American Cemetery in Margraten Holland

Rubbing sand from Omaha Beach on William
Allen's stone. 

In World War II American military leaders made a promise that no American soldier would be buried on enemy soil. Most American soldiers were buried in cemeteries near the battle field where they were killed- many in France. As the War ended, American soldiers had invaded Germany and were fighting on German soil, in some cases approaching Berlin. The soldiers who died in Germany were all removed and taken back to Margraten Holland.

Each family of the fallen soldiers was given the choice to have the soldier buried in Margraten or to be returned to the United States to be buried in a private or national cemetery. Once the decision was made by the family, the decision was considered final and could not be changed.

At one time there were over 17,000 soldiers taken to Margraten. Today the cemetery holds only American soldiers, and it has over 8,000 fall US soldiers from WW2 buried there.

William Allen's grave.

My wife's uncle, William Allen was killed at the end of WW2 and is buried in Margraten. We had an opportunity this summer to visit the cemetery. The assistant supt. of the grounds took us to visit William Allen's grave and to also visit Bob Arnold's grave. Bob was Bill's brother in law. We were escorted by Frans and Pauline Roukins. Pauline's family has cared for Bill and Bob's graves for over 60 years.

We had the opportunity to place flowers on the grave. The Supt. then explained a special practice they do with families of the soldiers. The stones of white marble with engraving are very difficult to photograph. To help them be more photographed, they provide sand for the family members to rub over the name so it can be seen. The sand is shipped in from Normandy beach. The significance of the the sand is that the soldiers who are buried in Margraten all started their invasion of Europe at Normandy beaches in France.

Over 8,000 fallen US soldiers are
buried in Margraten.

Our visit was a very emotional experience. It certainly makes one appreciate the sacrifice made by these soldiers.

Massey Roots

This is a picture of Gun Inn as you get off the
bus in Hollingworth. 

One of the courses I have taught at Galesburg HS is Diversity Studies. We look at different groups in America and their history- Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and Asian Americans. One of the focuses of the course is to look at the immigration process and the lives of immigrants. Even as we studied immigration, I never looked at that process and how my family had been impacted by immigration.

When I went to grade school in a different era, one of our lessons had to do with our ancestors country of origin. The teacher would have you find the origin of your ancestors. Then we would do work with fractions, you were 1/4 Irish, 1/2 English, and 1/4 Welch. As we did the work, my ancestors might as well have come to America in 1612 for all I cared- it was a long time ago.

Player Impact Estimate

Story on stat used to evaluate NBA and WNBA players....

PIE In the Sky

Anthony Oliva, WNBA.com

Tamika Catchings is the reigning WNBA MVP. She's a versatile forward that can score, rebound and distribute the basketball. LeBron James, the 2012 NBA MVP, can claim the very same.

And in the past, the comparisons between these two superstars would have stopped there.

For the 15-plus years that the WNBA has been in existence, drawing parallels between WNBA and NBA players ended up as an exercise in subjectivity. The styles were different. The rules were different. Maybe above all, thegame clocks were different (the NBA plays for 48 minutes and the W goes for 40). So, when you wanted to measure an NBA player against one in the WNBA (or vice-versa), you had to use some imagination. Until now.

NBA.com/stats has developed a new rating called the Player Impact Estimate, or PIE, that calculates a player’s impact on each individual game they play. Because the formula accounts for a player’s influence relative to each specific game, it eliminates statistical biases created by league, style of play or even era.

And now, thanks to PIE, we can make a definitive link between Catchings and James.