Cameron Cleminson
MASTER PROGRAM SYNTHESIS
Being hired onto Michigan State Football’s Coaching Staff was the greatest achievement of my life. I have always wanted to be a football coach, and when I got the opportunity, I could not believe it. I was going to be able to coach football at the School I love, and learn from some of the best coaches in the country. I was hired as a Graduate Assistant. A Graduate Assistant has two hats. Their primary job is to be one of the 15 coaches on the staff. The other job of a GA is to enroll in graduate school. I had my reserves about graduate school. I had just finished my undergrad degree when I was hired, so I was feeling some academic burnout. I had no idea what to expect as a graduate student, and on top of that, I was nervous starting my new job. With honest reflection, I would even say that I was annoyed that I had to take classes. I did not think I was going to get anything out of my classes, and never really planed on finishing my degree. Clearly, I was wrong. This program has prepared me for my career after Graduate School. Just like any program, some classes are going to prepare better than others are. The amazing thing about this program is that I have already had real life examples of my classes better preparing me for my job. I was able to take something I learned in the classroom, and apply it to the football field. These examples are what proves that this program has better prepared me to coach football.
KIN 857: Promoting Positive Youth Development in Sports
Being a head coach of a football team is the end goal for me. The opportunity to help develop young men and help them reach their full potential is something I strive to do. Coaching, in its simplest form, is helping someone reach his or her goals. If I can do that, and win a few football games along the way, then I will be extremely happy with my life. I have not had the chance to be a head coach of a program yet, but KIN 857 was a close second. The major project of this class is to develop a program, for a sport of your choosing, at the youth level. I decided I was going to be the head coach of a youth soccer program. Now at first glance, youth soccer and college football do not have a lot in common. I wanted to choose a sport that would really make me focus on the logistics of coaching and running a program, not the X’s and O’s of coaching football. Some of these logistics range from creating a practice schedule, and season schedule, and even team rules. When I was asked to do these things, I had no idea where to even start. This class allowed me to focus on these tasks, and find out what I liked and did not like with them.
Creating a practice script is a head coach's largest role when it comes to practice. Position coaches coach their positions and Coordinators script the team periods while overseeing everything on their side of the ball. The head coach sets the schedule. Before I took KIN 857, I was guessing to why Coach Dantonio would choose to do at practice. This class, along with Coach Dantonio and Coach Tucker, has prepared me to make a practice schedule for a team. The biggest take away from the class was that organization is step one. A coach needs to have a written down schedule going into practice if they are going to be successful. Practice can get frantic at times, for a coach, and having a good practice script to fall back on is a coach’s best friend. It is also important to understand that every practice is going unique, so every practice script should be also. It is great to have drills and periods that are staples of your script, but a coach needs to be ready to cut periods if players are tired, or even add a period if extra work is needed in certain areas. These type of practice modifications are different at every level of sport. Extra periods for extra work should not be added to younger players. If anything, there should be less drills for a young players, and more periods of fun!
Just as practice requires preparation from the head coach, so does the entire season schedule. The first rule of the season long schedule is that it needs to be flexible. Dr. Gould would say that we need to be able to read our team, and adjust as we go. Even though there is constant change with the yearly calendar, you need one for something to work off of. The best way to make this schedule is to have your team most prepared for games, while also keeping their legs fresh. In addition, especially at a younger level, a season long schedule can help parents plan around their busy schedule.
At the start of the season, it is good to hand out the season long schedule. Another great resource to give the team at that point are the team rules. A head coach needs to have expectations for their players, and the players need to understand what is expected of them. A great way to build this understanding is to have team rules. When I was developing these team rules, it forced me to think about my coaching philosophy. What is important to me? This part of the class helped realize that a team will take on the identity of their coach, so the head coach needs to know who they are, before they can shape their team. Giving your team a clear understanding of what you expect will eliminate miscommunication. Coach Tucker says that discipline is 85% anticipation, and giving team rules is a great way to help with expectations.
KIN 868: Skill Development in Athletes
Professional football players do not practice the same way that Jr. High football players do. This seems like an obvious statement, sure, but what actually makes their practices different? The obvious answer is the physicality of the game. The athletic ability cannot be compared. The interesting thing about Professional football players is that they all started at the same point. They were the young Jr. High football players who did not resemble NFL talent. The question then becomes how these young athletes turn into these pros? What types of things did they do, at what age, that best prepared them to develop at the proper rate? KIN 865 introduced me to when athletes should start to learn skills, and how these can be safely developed.
Athlete Development is the name of the game in college football. This class, without a doubt, made me a better football player. I was able to take the knowledge from this class, and apply it in real time. For example, we had just learned in KIN 868 that athletes at a competitive age, where the focus is winning, need to be doing things in practice that directly relate to winning the game, or developing a skill. The action should be a game movement. In comparison to developmental level coaching, where drills can be more athlete development based, not skill based. I was standing out at practice and I saw that our punt block drill was using a volleyball to block the punt. While seemed ok because it is softer on the players hands, and allows them to work on the technique, we were too far along in the teaching of the skill for it to not directly relate to a game situation. Yes modifications are great when first learning a skill, but we needed to some pressure on these guys to perform the skill. I told our special teams coach that for our guys to get the most out of this drill we needed to be using a real football, and doing the drill at full game speed. He agreed with me, and changed the drill. I wouldn’t have been able to articulate what I was trying to say to our special teams coach without this class.
Another idea this class introduced me to were drill modifications. There are certain aspects of a skill that you want to work on, but are hard to get to happen naturally. For instances, you’re a QB coach, and you want your QB to work on feeling pressure, escaping the pocket, and keeping his eyes down the field. The issue is that your offensive line is picking up the pressure from the scout team. A modification that can be put on this drill would be to remove the number of people blocking on the Offensive line. There is normally 5 Offensive Linemen on each play, and usually in a pass situation they are blocking 4 people. A good modification, to get your QB used to escaping the pocket, would be to have 1 Offensive Linemen try to block 1 Defensive Linemen, while running routes behind them. This provides more space for the D-Linemen to throw his move, which makes it harder on the O-Linemen to block him, which forces the QB to escape the pocket. You do not have to follow the rules of the game to the letter of the law when practicing. The most important part is that your player is able to practice the proper technique you want them to learn, and they can practice it safely.
KIN 868 was an extremely helpful class for me.
KIN 859: Legal and Administrative Issues of Coaching
As I said before, coaching is not always X’s and O’s. If there were a main takeaway from KIN 859, it would be that player safety is the number one responsibility of a coach at all times, and at any level. I had always agreed with that statement, but I did not understood how I could tackle this responsibility until I took KIN 859. Professor Breske made it very clear to us that it was our job to see possible dangerous out comes while we were at practice, and remove them preemptively. Since taking this class, I have made altercations to the way I run some of my drills while out at practice. During our pre-practice warm up, or during workouts without helmets on, I used to have the guys go under our chute to teach them to play low. The chute is mostly made of metal, and if you were to hit your head on it, it could do some damage. By taking the class, it forced me to look internally and see if I was doing everything as safely as possible. After some reflection, I decided to have the guys use the single chutes when they don’t have pads on, because they are made of plastic. A lot easier on their heads if they were to make contact. Coaches can avoid injuries, if proper preparation is used.
This class also talked about concussions, a topic that has been a smudge on the game of football. The more we learn as coaches on the dangers of concussions, and the signs that an athlete might have one, the more we can do to help protect these players. Concussions, just like any other injury, cannot be removed, but they can be limited with proper teaching and coaching. I was able to take what I learned in this class, and better myself as a coach.