Three Reasons to Coach a High School Team

Three Reasons to Coach a High School Team

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Chris Grey and Andy Jones hammer throw

Jesse Doty, semi-professional hammer thrower from SUNY Brockport told me my junior year of college that he thinks everyone should start coaching at the modified level (middle school). He didn’t go into much detail mostly because I rolled my eyes and said, “fuck that” to myself

I hate teaching the basics and at the time I didn't want to deal with younger kids. As a common theme in my life, that's exactly what I did. I found it is by far the best way to start coaching.

Here are the reasons I found

  • You get battle toughness
The chaos of a high school practice is always a challenge. Kids skip practice for no reason, they give up after one bad throw, they talk back and my personal favorite they will argue with you like they know what’s best (not sarcasm, I thoroughly enjoy putting them in their place).

Every day it was something new. The only tame days were when it was just Rob and me. Even then we would get side tracked talking about basketball, football or Michael Jackson. At Alfred I hardly dealt with any of this stuff but when it happened I knew how to control it instantly.
  • Teaching the basics
While I hate to do it, knowing how to do it is immensely important.  Most college throwers will come onto the team knowing how to throw already so the basics get lost and some of the biggest technical issues are based in fundamentals. 

Or you have a new athlete who is really strong/quick but has horrendous technique, you’ll have to redo everything they know. Having a solid understanding of how to coach the basics will make that process much easier. 
  • Ingenuity 
Unless you’re really lucky, coaching at a high school means you’ll have crappy conditions. Track teams are usually over looked and ignored completely by the higher ups. Getting equipment and even practices areas can be a pain in the ass. 

I am so use to having nothing that I always look for a way to use something normally unrelated to throws to help us. I came up with shadow throws because I had nowhere to throw. (I don't claim to have invented them but I used them without doing any research as to if they would work)

I don’t know if its coaches in general or just throws coaches but we, as a group, find very unique ways to use things. On The Ring you’ll see people like Coach Mac explaining how to make a hammer cage out of fishing nets. 

It’s amazing what people learn when they don’t have unlimited funds.

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