RobHowe
Administrator
Owen Freeman Building Bond with Iowa Basketball
'23 Illinois Forward Solid in His Hawkeye Verbal Commitment
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Owen Freeman Building Bond with Iowa Basketball
- Thread starter RobHowe
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His jumper is a little mechanic and slow. But you can tell he can make them which is more than what Iowa's currrent bigs are capable of. I haven't seen enough of Mulvey to really know I guess how his game translates but between those two guys hopefully they can have a solid 5 spot the next few yrs
Fryowa
Administrator
Two different Freemans
MelroseHawkins
Well-Known Member
Yea, I was confused.
Fryowa
Administrator
You’ve got baseball on the brain. It’s ok. We started BP this past Sunday night.
99topdawg
Well-Known Member
Hope you had a good turnout. We don't get to start until wrestling is over because they roll up the mats and we pull out the nets. We hit whiffles now, but the kids lose interest after a while, which I get. I like the fact that we get 5 practices before May 1st this year. I think it's Boone's way of allowing the ones that play by the rules keep close with the 90% that don't.
Fryowa
Administrator
I’ve only got one senior and one junior going out, 8 sophomores (my son’s class), and I think 4 freshman. In a school on the upper end of 2A. Our thankfully former rec director in town here absolutely destroyed youth sports for several years and now we’re seeing the effects in high school. Kids don’t get anything resembling coaching when they’re younger, get their asses kicked all through grade school, and give it up.
But we did have good turnout. I follow the rules and don’t do any instructing until March so right now I just tell guys to run through their normal drills and have a parent feed a machine for full cuts. The players I do have are good kids and they show up and work hard, and there’s zero drama with any of them. The sophomore group is getting some payoff for sticking together all these years because they’re the better players, and most of ‘em will be 4 year starters when it’s all said and done.
99topdawg
Well-Known Member
Yeah, you can't say enough about having good kids. Had a team go to state and I was pumped, but realized shortly after the last out that I had to put up with those a-holes and their a-hole parents for another week. I have the same thing going on. Great kids, really fun, but hoping to make it to .500. I'll take the good kids any day. Also have a great kid, great athlete, education major as my new assistant. Excited for that too.
As for following the rules, I dont have much of a problem with that. When I have open gym for hitting, sure I pull a kid aside to give him things to work on, but if they want to run me out over that kind of stuff, they'll get me out for something else. The fact that we can start instructing in March, its not a problem. March is pretty early when you consider the other sports are just ending. Of the 26 I'm expecting, 24 are in a winter sport, so I'm pretty hands off now anyway.
As for following the rules, I dont have much of a problem with that. When I have open gym for hitting, sure I pull a kid aside to give him things to work on, but if they want to run me out over that kind of stuff, they'll get me out for something else. The fact that we can start instructing in March, its not a problem. March is pretty early when you consider the other sports are just ending. Of the 26 I'm expecting, 24 are in a winter sport, so I'm pretty hands off now anyway.
As somebody who lives in the DSM metro, this is absolutely mind blowing to me. That said, I think Ames even had a hard time fielding a team a few years ago.
Fryowa
Administrator
I was actually wrong in my earlier post. It's 7 sophomores, not 8. One tore an ACL in track last year.
13 total in a 2A school.
Can't understate enough how important a good rec sports department is to the future of a high school team. And I'm not talking club sports...those should just go away...I'm talking plain old town rec like when we were kids. Our rec director for the past 11 years was a lazy POS who didn't do a thing other than make excuses for why our pool took all of his time. Kids who don't have a parent in their grade who played a sport get zero coaching, then they go play games and get their butts kicked, then they either have no fun and quit before junior high, or they do go out and they're so fundamentally terrible at the sport that they don't play past freshman or JV ball and they quit. That's what we're dealing with in baseball, basketball, and soccer right now. I took over varsity three years ago and no shit I had to spend time teaching sophomores and juniors what tagging up is. Not how to do it the right way...actually teaching them what it was as a concept.
Same thing with pitching. I had guys who didn't know the difference between the stretch and wind up, let alone when to do which one.
I had 6 sophomores last year which should have been 6 juniors this year, but only one of them was even remotely decent. The others aren't going out because they had freshman playing ahead of them so they figure why bother. The only bright side was that class was the one with parents complaining about playing time so now I don't have that headache. The 13 kids that are left this year have really good parents who are supportive.
I've laid awake at night for a lot of hours worrying about it, but I'm at a point now where I just take it as it comes. I want to win and I do everything I can to help these guys do that, but in a lot of cases we're playing teams that are 30-40 guys deep in high school and most of the 2A and 3A teams grew up traveling for club ball. It is what it is, I just try to enjoy it like @99topdawg mentioned above and not get stressed over losing.
99topdawg
Well-Known Member
Nothing pisses me off more than going to youth practice and see them practicing leading off, running through 1st base, rounding bases, etc. How about teaching them to throw, catch, and hit. I always tell my assistant and JH coaches that, if they're trying to come up with something to do for practice, have them throw, catch, and hit. It's 95% of the game. Sure, bunts (and other things) are needed at times, start young and have them do those 3 things throughout and my job will be easy when they get to me. If they can't run through the GD bag, that might actually make me happy because I know they learned the important things when they were younger.
Yea, across the metro suburbs, there's 20-30 kids going out for each baseball level.
Fryowa
Administrator
That is great advice.
At the rec level, I'd add, make everyone pitch. At least try it. You'll get a few kids who lock up and can't handle it, but that's totally fine. As a little kid I would've been one of those.
But can you imagine how many really good pitchers have never stepped on a mound because they never got to try it?
I have 3 guys on my current team who've ever pitched in a varsity game, and now I have to bring two more in. One is the junior I have and the other 4 will be sophomores. There's teams in our conference who had 10 kids pitch at some point last year. That's way over half my team
That is great advice.
At the rec level, I'd add, make everyone pitch. At least try it. You'll get a few kids who lock up and can't handle it, but that's totally fine. As a little kid I would've been one of those.
But can you imagine how many really good pitchers have never stepped on a mound because they never got to try it?
I have 3 guys on my current team who've ever pitched in a varsity game, and now I have to bring two more in. One is the junior I have and the other 4 will be sophomores. There's teams in our conference who had 10 kids pitch at some point last year. That's way over half my team
I coach Little League (This year I'll have 10 year olds) and last year every kid on my team pitched at least 1 inning except one and he just didn't want to do it. I'm not going to make anybody do it but I'll tell them if they work on it they'll get put in the game. The team who won the regular season literally pitched like 3 kids all year and it kind of pisses me off.
In Ankeny at these lower age groups there are 200+ kids in little league in every age, and that's not counting the kids who do club. My 12 year old has several basketball teammates who play club and three of their teams disbanded after last year and several of the kids are quitting altogether. I told their parents to just sign them up for LL and just have fun with it. I'd give any of my kids basically a 1% chance to play any varsity sport in Ankeny so you have the opposite problem around here.
MelroseHawkins
Well-Known Member
Our boys played club/travel ball and I think got really good instruction. The players on that team were fundamentally and technically sound. But, as you state, not all players can afford to play club ball and there are a lot of kids that could be pretty good athletes get left behind because they are behind the curve if they do go out later.
I grew up in a small town and I often wondered what they do back in the small town now. Do they even have a rec league anymore and what is the quality of it. I don't recall ever running across my town's name in club ball. Don't even know if they have one. I suspect a couple or few kids might commute to one of the bigger cities around to play, but I dunno. Kind of sad when I think about it.
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Fryowa
Administrator
That trick stops working once they get to school ball. Pitch counts have killed the game at the HS level.
Fryowa
Administrator
That's the thing. The fun has been taken out of kids sports. Parents and coaches who want money from parents have made it a job.
I'm going to be completely honest here and tell you I enjoy going to my son's XC meets exponentially more than baseball. Which I thought I'd never say. Can't even believe I just typed that.
XC is completely chill, all the runners get along among teams, no parents are going full idiot mode, none of that. My kid started running XC for the first time last year as a freshman and did really well, and he loves it. I love just going to the meets with zero expectations or pent up jadedness. He's got a few guys on opponents teams that he's made friends with, and they have a great time even while they're being competitive. One of the guys he went back and forth with this past year from a neighboring town came up right after the race and gave him a hug when he qualified for state. If that were baseball, football, or basketball there'd be none of that.
I don't know enough about the training or racing side of the sport to get on him or yell any "coach speak" at him, so I just drive to wherever it is, pull up my lawn chair, and enjoy the weather and race. It's bliss.
