WSN News
Book Review: Coaching a Season of Significance by Greg Winkler
by
Travis Wilson,
11/9/2009
Coaching a Season of Significance by Greg Winkler Coaches are always looking for tools and resources to improve their programs and benefit their teams.
Coaching a Season of Significance was written by a soccer coach for soccer coaches, however, many of the ideas can be utilized by any coach for any sport.
Author Greg Winkler is the head boys and girls soccer coach at Fond du Lac High School, and has been involved with coaching soccer for over 20 years. Beginning as a volunteer coach in the Fond du Lac Youth Soccer Association, Coach Winkler has seen hundreds of players go through his program.
Winkler was President of the Wisconsin Soccer Coaches Association from 2002-2006, and currently serves on the WIAA Soccer Advisory Committee. His teams have won nine Regional titles, five Conference titles, and he has been named the Large School Boys State Coach of the Year.
Coaching a Season of Significance starts at the beginning of the season with the preseason meeting, organization, and setting team goals. It takes a look at many of the challenges coaches face throughout the course of their season, concluding with the post-season banquet.
Coaching a Season of Significance looks at team rules, the difference between coaching boys and girls, selecting a team, dealing with administration, program promotion, and more.
A “Notes” section is provided after each chapter, allowing the reader to select and highlight ideas, phrases, and other information.
If you are looking for ideas that will help make your season or your coaching significant, and if you want to have a significant impact on your athletes, this book will be worth the read.
“What a great tool!
Coaching a Season of Significance is a must-read for coaches wanting to improve their relationships with players, parents, referees, and other coaches. Written with insight and compassion, Coach Winkler shares what has worked and what hasn't. He has built a youth soccer program that has gone from 350 players to over 2000, while also developing a successful high school program. These achievements are testimonies to the strength of Winkler’s techniques. On the soccer field and beyond, this book is a valuable resource for coaches of any sport.”
– Keith Tozer, Head Coach of the Milwaukee Wave and the winningest coach in North American indoor soccer history
For more information and to order the book, visit
www.gregwinkler.net or
Amazon.com. Coach Winkler is also available for speaking engagements, with details on his website.
Top Posters for the Month of September
by
Travis Wilson,
10/13/2009
Posts have been tallied, and we're pleased to announce the top posters (based on number of posts) on our message board in the month of August. Congratulations to cameroncrazies02, who was the top poster in the month of August with 241 posts, or 8.03 posts per day.
Points for the top posters will be assigned shortly, and the points break down as follows:
Top poster -- 50 WisCash
2-5 place -- 40 WisCash
6-10 place -- 30 WisCash
11-15 place -- 20 WisCash
16-20 place -- 10 WisCash
Here are the top posters, with number of posts followed by the amount of WisCash earned:
cameroncrazies02 241 50
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MWarrior2008 211 40
Pinetar 198 40
longball 171 40
diener34 169 40
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peckulease 167 30
crusaderpride 164 30
dfnewburry 157 30
wis.gator 151 30
FHS5479 149 30
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sportsfan 134 20
a fan 131 20
j_townsupporter 128 20
MBC2K4 124 20
justjon007 117 20
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hoopsaddict 109 10
Twista_05 107 10
Coach40 91 10
Mr_mike527 87 10
JimmyQ 84 10
August WSN Cash-In Raffle Winners
by
Travis Wilson,
10/13/2009
First of all, we would like to apologize for the delay in conducting this raffle. With the football season getting into high gear and all the other stuff that goes into providing the coverage that we do, it fell through the cracks and shouldn't have.
We plan on doing a special Fall Raffle with some special items to hopefully make up for it to you, the readers and followers of WSN.
Below are the winners of the August WSN Cash-In Raffle. Winners will be contacted via the email on their profile and their prizes will be sent to the address in their profile.
It is important for all winners to have a current and correct name and address in their user profile. My email can be found in the
Contact Us area if you have any questions.
Congratulations to the following winners:
Username Prize
1) Dmonroe - $100 Eastbay Gift Card
2) Baraboo99 - Choice of Boys or Girls Yearbook; or WSN Illustrated Subscription
3) mrmcpheely - Choice of Boys or Girls Yearbook; or WSN Illustrated Subscription
4) allsportstar32 - Choice of Boys or Girls Yearbook; or WSN Illustrated Subscription
5) sabre7 - Choice of Boys or Girls Yearbook; or WSN Illustrated Subscription
6) mrmcpheely - Choice of Boys or Girls Yearbook; or WSN Illustrated Subscription
7) nmbr 88 - Choice of Boys or Girls Yearbook; or WSN Illustrated Subscription
8) Tylah10 - Choice of Boys or Girls Yearbook; or WSN Illustrated Subscription
9) Erwin - Choice of Boys or Girls Yearbook; or WSN Illustrated Subscription
m.WisSports.net launches for mobile devices
by
Nicholas Kartos,
10/8/2009
Wisconsin Sports Network, the premier high school sports media company, located in Madison, WI announced today a mobile version of their popular high school sports site WisSports.net.
The address to access the mobile site is m.wissports.net
The mobile site features all the stories, scores, standings, rosters and schedules that their full version site offers.
“This one has been on the wish list for awhile,” said WSN Founder and President Nicholas Kartos. “Being addicted to my handheld device myself it is awesome to be able to access the wealth of high school sports content on our site in a quick neatly packaged format. “
The site is not only formatted to fit the size of cellphones and PDAs but it also has been fine tuned to load quickly. “The file size of all the page loads is very, very low. Our web developer Shawn McCray did a great job putting it together,” said Kartos.
Future enhancements to the mobile site will be message board access, scores posting and voting in WSN polls.
Other Notes From a Busy Area Meeting
by
Travis Wilson,
9/23/2009
By Travis Wilson
WisSports.net Content Producer
There was so much information and discussion (what would you expect from a meeting that lasted 3 hours and 57 minutes) from today's meeting, that it was impossible to cover it all in one article. We've already gone in depth on both the
5-division basketball discussion and the
district football proposal. Now its time to examine some of the "other" topics that generated discussion from today's Area Meeting in Barneveld that could end up having huge impacts on the high school sports landscapes.
The first item on the agenda was an open forum to voice concerns or questions that were not specifically to be addressed in today's meeting. Among those topics were:
- A waiver to allow schools to hire first-time coaches that may have coached players in the summer or out of season periods. Currently those coaches cannot join the staff immediately, but some schools would like them to be eligible if they are the most qualified candidates. WIAA Executive Director warned it was an opportunity for "calculated abuse", but it would be considered.
- The idea of a running clock in basketball for a "Mercy rule" was brought up, with the WIAA stating they would consider it with the coaches advisory council.
- There was a debate on whether to implement the new 43-foot pitching distance for softball in 2010 or 2011. The WIAA stated the coaches advisory council would address that soon.
- The rule on lightning was clarified to indicate that cloud to ground lightning would result in an automatic 30-minute delay, not just lightning off in the distance. A request was also made by a member school to clarify the procedures for ending a game early due to weather. Currently a "coaches agreement" provision applies, but sometimes coaches can't agree on whether to end, suspend, or make up an event.
- The question was posed if there were any considerations to reducing the number of contests. Deb Hauser stated that was not a widespread concern she had heard, and that the coaches are asking for more contests. Also stated that limiting contests could further push athletes to compete with club teams.
One issue that came up during the basketball state tournament in 2009 was that of an ineligible student causing a forfeit that was then appealed based on the "contribution to victory" clause in the rulebook. However, because of the tight turn-around time, it caused a great headache. An anticipated constitutional change for next season would remove that clause during tournament play, meaning forfeits due to ineligible players would be unable to be appealed using the "contribution to victory" clause.
Another anticipated constitutional change would be to increase the penalty for voluntarily withdrawing from a conference. Currently the problems lie with football and some schools leaving conferences, causing great disarray for the remaining members. The current penalty bans that school from post-season play for a period of four years in football. The proposed amendment would remove that school from the conference in all sports, not just football. It was described as a move to dissuade schools from leaving established conferences.
Summer contact was a hot topic as well. The WIAA proposed adjusting the calendar to make the "summer period" start date uniform as of the Saturday before Memorial Day. Some schools objected since they are in school until mid-June and wouldn't want winter coaches to use contact days while spring sports are still competing.
A similar issue revolved around calls for unlimited summer contact for sports. Right now, only some sports have unlimited summer contact, such as baseball, tennis, golf, and swimming/diving. Some schools are in favor of having unlimited contact extended to all coaches, while others were in favor of trimming that back from the existing sports.
One of the positives of having all sports receive unlimited contact as described by some is to alleviate some of the rural/urban pressures, especially in basketball. If a perceived advantage an urban or suburban school has it the ability for those players to go to many gyms, facilities, and club teams during the summer while rural schools lack the same opportunities, giving high school coaches the ability to assemble and provide constructive instruction to their players would help even the playing field. Deb Hauser stated this idea was first proposed by Suring's Gary Regal in an earlier meeting.
One issue that received overwhelming support was to remove bans on players participating and assembling during the school year but out of the sport season. For instance, many basketball players want to get together as a team shortly before the start of their season and play in tournament and scrimmages to prepare for the upcoming campaign. The WIAA currently has a rule on the books that disallows this, stating that teams "cannot in any way resemble school teams" during out-of-season competition. The WIAA admitted it was a very vague definition that they had concerns about holding up in court. An overwhelming number of delegates at today's meeting supported dropping this rule and allowing players to voluntarily assemble and play together as long as no high school coach is involved.
Recent Sportsmanship initiatives, H1N1 flu virus updates, and the addition of wheelchair-bound competition at the state track and field meet were also discussed. The WIAA staff indicated there would be further discussions on the summer baseball season, including the potential to combine it with spring, another proposal to limit the teams involved, as well as moving the summer state tournament site.
The WIAA also updated schools on two pilot programs currently in development. One involves live-streaming games via the WIAA.tv website through a turn-key partnership with When We Were Young Productions. The other was a School Licensing Group Pilot program that would encourage and give schools the ability to license their logos, name, and mascots. Any companies wishing to use those images would then have to secure licensing rights and pay a licensing fee. It would be a potential source of revenue for schools while helping them protect their names and images from being used by anyone who wanted to, including out of state companies soliciting advertising from local businesses.
At the end of the session, a drawing was held to award a $2,000 scholarship on behalf of Farmer's Insurance to one boys athletic program and one girls athletic program. Oregon High School was drawn to receive the girls scholarship while Belmont was drawn to receive the boys.