At this Division 6 School in Michigan, character is number one
“All the hard work, all the planning and dedication from players to what you can do if everyone is pulling in thes direction!”
Coach Chad Phillip our programs.”
Take, for example, the baseball team, which won the regional champic ‘These are the words of best performance by any baseball team in the history of the school.
River High School in LeRoy, Michigan. What he is referring to is the 8-2 record his team achieved in 2004, along with a playoff berth for Pine River. just one of the model student-athletes at only the second time in school history. He’s also referring to the academic players received with the top GPA of 3.761 also referring to a program that is doing things the right way.
A junior last season, Bowyt team in tackles, baseball he earned three varsity letters and was named first-team allconference. Carrying a 4.0 all-conference and all-area as a linebacker. In emphasis on developing a balanced strength training program and on encouraging athletes to participate in multiple sports. room and has a 300 bench press and 405 squat at a bodyweight of just 185 pounds. there’s not such an intense focus on just football. My last two schools Coach Phillips is entering his tenth year as a coach, having been at had about 1,800 students, and that's the biggest level in our Pine River for the past three.
In addition to coaching defense, he's it’s a lot harder to make the team if you’ also the strength and conditioning coach and teaches At smaller schools the coaches may just be ying to get enough numbers to have teams. At a training classes a day. Phillips says he was inspired to become a coach by those who coached him. models for me f your best bas! plays basketball or if your best football player just plays football. You need those athletes all year round.” lives, and that attracted me to teaching and coachin they were nothing like the coaches depicted in the movie Friday One stereotype about coaches Phillips says he always makes a point Night Lights.
st of all, you have to understand that what happens in ‘Texas quite different than what happens about the controversial T most kids in our in a lot ofstates,” correcting is that many people don’t believe football coache: as dedicated or as good as other teachers. to realize is that we may not get home until seven or e are going home at three or four. Most importantly, I believe most coaches are trying to teach character and are The Bucks use the BFS Dot Drill as a warm-up for their weight training workouts. not like the tyrants or win-at-all-cost coaches ies,” says Phillips.
“Most of us who are coaching are trying to teach that you need to ave heart, that you need to be a good person and that there are no shortcuts to s s. that those athletes who have gone through our program have made great friends, learned how to work as a team, and were taught that character Building Muscles the Old Fashioned Way In his weight training classes, Phillips has the same expectations for every student: female, male, athletes, non-athletes. expected towork hard and everybody is equal. one reason for the popularity of his River's athletic program.
“If you go back about five years there wasn’t a conditioning class a all, and that was part of the reason we were schools in our conferen Phillips.
At first most of the coaches were unsure about weightlifting, but the more success we've had, the more sure they’ve become — expect the athletes to get what they need out of class.” He adds that The most successful strength program ever!
~The new BES Exercise Instruction DVBashows’ you a auxiliaries. Want top athletic performance and © athletes? You need this OVO! Dvpteaches och o in short, easy Bench: tounderstand Box Squat video clips: when he started teaching strength and conditioning classes three years across the country. After the Be an 11 clinic I found our athletes were ago he only had eight girls participating and now about one third of more willing to listen to what we say.” the students in his classes are girls. Such a turnaround, he says, is due to education.
Another motivational tool the Pine River coaches employ is a team “One of the things many girls are afraid of is getting big and bulky mission statement with such intentions as “to have fun, always give from lifting weights, so we do have to explain to them that females our all, have a winning record, and practice as a team.” Says Phillips, don’t have the testosterone levels of males so they're not going to put “After we decided on our mission statement, we wrote ten things that on massive amounts of muscle or look like bodybuilders.
| would help us accomplish that mission, such as “be optimistic in a lot of testing with them — whether it’s the Dot Drill, parallel squat games or practice, have a team GPA of 3.5 or above, play one game at or vertical jump — so they can see that they are getting stronger and a time, stay away from drugs and alcohol, and conduct ourselves with faster. [ also started doing bodyfat testing to show that even though class at all times.” they might gain a couple of pounds of bodyweight, they are actually losing bodyfat.” The strategy worked, and it also has translated into “We had everybody sign it, and | posted it right in the locker room results in the athletic arena.
window, and everybody got a copy. We told the athletes to put it somewhere where they're going to see it every day. Some put it on their bed- “The first feedback | started hearing was that the girls in the program room wall, some put it inside their football locker, so they would think were having fewer muscle pulls and injuries,” says Phillips. “The word about what they would have to do to make the team better.” got around, with the girls telling their teammates, ‘Hey, the weightlifting class is hard work, but you get a lot out of it.
Another character-building practice at Pine River is to make realistic better ball player, and I look better — | didn’t develop huge biceps.’ ” team rules and enforce them. “If you allow a player to cross the line and do something that harms the team, it just gets worse and Even with his program's success, Phillips says he still has to do a big, worse — you have to put your foot down,” says Phillips. “This year a sales job with the younger kids.
“It’s important to educate them about player of ours decided to skip practice to go fishing and so we took him the benefits of training and about some of the myths about weight off the team — in the past we would have let that go and given him a training, as there are still a lot of misconceptions about this type of second chance.” training.”
Finally, Phillips says he teaches his athletes not to let their success In the area of motivation, one way Phillips helped turn around his go to their head. “We tell our kids, ‘Don't go around with your chest program was to have a Be an 11 clinic in 2003 with Jeff Sellers. “For puffed out, but be humble — congratulate others on their success. If whatever reason, kids tend to listen more to people they don’t know you walk around like a big shot, people are not going to think much than to people they do know. Having that reinforcement from BES ofyou.
But if you’re humble and treat people with respect, they will was huge, because BFS has been doing these seminars for so long all “Be An 1] has changed my life! I WILL BEAN LI! Katie Healer “ReafÏrmed the reason I entered coaching 25 eThis is exactly what Our school and com: munity needed.”
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From BFS Magazine — September/October 2005. Part of the BFS Magazine Archive (1980–2014).
