“Chip Shots”

September 2010

I hope all of you are having a great end to summer and early fall and for those of you that are teachers you are going back refreshed and ready for the school year. We have had a number of changes in high school golf over the past few years and my hope is that they continue to go smoothly and even improve as time goes on. The golf coaches' advisory board works for you and so if you have suggestions let me know and we will work to improve where we can.

A special thank you goes out to the coaches who continue to handle the academic awards and the ratings awards for the coaches association—Steve Heslop and Kerry Bidle. Also, another thank you goes out to the coaches who handle the golf banquets at the state tournaments: Rich Aulie-A, Mike Frankenfield-AA, and Tim Kallevig-AAA. A reminder-in order for your players to make academic all-state at the state tournament banquet a coach needs to be a member of the coaches association. It seems that each year I get emails inquiring how a player gets this recognition or gets on to the coaches all-state teams. So I hope you consider joining the coaches association this year-your athletes are eligible for awards like academic all-state and the weekly ratings awards (any senior who plays in the first round of the section rounds and has an unweighted grade point average of 3.7 or higher makes academic all-state). Remember there are other advantages of membership like free entrance into high school events, deals on hotels, insurance, etc. So remember to join the coaches association early in the school year so both you and your players can benefit.

Currently we are working on a better communication channel for the golf coaches of the state. For example, last year I received very few nominations for the section coach and section assistant coach of the year. I do not know if the meets managers are expecting that the teams winning coach is automatically the nominee (I believe there should be a better way in deciding this)-so early in September, if you were a member of the coaches association over the past two years, expect an email for voting and nominating your peers for the past two years (you probably will have this information by the time you get this chip shots)- there are a lot of worthy coaches across the state and I would like to work on this and get better recognition for coaches. Three additional coaches deserve a special thank you for helping get this current list of coaches and contact information together: Milo Larson-A, Bob Gorden-AA and Craig Nasvik-AAA.

Together the MSHSL and the coaches association are looking at how the coaching on the course can be improved. If you have suggestions or ideas on what is working and what needs to be tweaked, let me know and the discussions will take place to help us prepare for next golf season. For example, I realize that cell phones are not to be on during a meet for the players, etc. but last year two situations came up which I felt it necessary for the coaches to have access to them: one involved the weather and the threat of storms surrounding the course and the second involved getting a lost club to a player who left it at home before the section meet. I can see another example when parents are arriving at a meet after a meet has started-how do they figure out where their son or daughter is located on the course? The clubhouse, I have found, rarely knows. The coach knows but if they are on the course coaching they would not be able to talk with the parent-the ability to text this information would be very helpful.

Last spring in the spring chip shots I tried to start a dialog on the questions and thoughts we might have as coaches like best fundraising ideas, best drills, what ways might you handle qualifying, how do you handle indoor practice, etc. Last year with the later start of the season I was wondering how to start the season? In the past I had always had a few days to weeks of indoor practice but with the nice early weather I was looking for ideas on how best start the season—the courses opened early and how do you keep the interest in practicing when the players can get right on the course? Is there an interest in starting a blog or other ways of sharing the information/ideas and ways of doing things? Do you have topics, questions or things to share with other coaches?

Keep in touch and get back to me if you have questions, concerns or thoughts for the upcoming year-as I get older the seasons are starting to fly by and in no time we will be getting ready for next springs golf season-but lets first enjoy the fall where we usually get some great golf weather.