Saturday Musing

Hopefully every has read my article from yesterday. Even if you have, I suggest going through the comments. Based on some of the comments, I wanted to follow-up with additional thoughts in this post.

Our New England buddy “Ned” posted a link to the Master Coaches “Buzz”, which included the Executive Director of the AVCA, Kathy DeBoer. The tone she sets is really what is interesting and scary. As I wrote in a comment to yesterday’s post, she’s basically saying that coaches today need to see in what ways they can help their schools. Especially the one’s that are tuition based and don’t have the huge endowments. She mentioned that increasing roster sizes is one way to do this. I immediately had an issue with this but given our times, I certainly understand it. This got me to thinking about an article on JV Programs in the West Region that I did two years ago. I think this might be a better way to help enrollment while also growing the game of volleyball in this difficult time. I don’t think just increasing the “varsity” roster size really grows the game as I think you’ll end up with a number of disillusioned one and done student-athletes. Both Cal Lutheran and Pacific have JV programs and they each treat them differently so there is a roadmap for whichever direction a volleyball program wants to go.

I had a little back and forth with Ricky Nelson in the comments and it really focused on safety. As I wrote the article that published yesterday, I mentally inserted myself a number of times as a parent of a student-athlete and what would I do during this time. I’m very thankful that is not the case but there will be some brave decisions made by parents. The student-athletes want to go to college. They are indestructible and they want to learn and gain new freedoms and play volleyball. Parents have to look at the big picture. I think if we can get widespread testing then this would help the decision process. By this I mean, I need a test, I can get a test and I get a quick result. We are able to isolate positive individuals and the schools have a plan where they can quarantine these students while still taking on-line classes (and obviously receiving care). They can then start daily testing of those they contacted. If young people have fewer symptoms (on the average) with this virus then this makes sense and may make a college campus safer than the general community. If I was a college president, I’d probably setup a strategy that included testing anyone that needed to leave the campus. It’s important to protect the college community, too. Another rabbit hole. So much for these colleges to do and think about in order to get their doors open in the fall. So many questions that parents really need answers to before they risk their money and, more importantly, their child.

In other news…

The DIII President’s Council has been considering student-athlete compensation. There is a release you can find, here. In summary, they are looking at passing legislation next year (2021-2022) and it would include allowing for compensation for participating in promotions and other endorsements. Not a big game changer in DIII but I can certainly see where some could benefit especially those in small town college environments.

Noticed that Pomona-Pitzer received a commitment from June Hsu. I just really think that Hsu needed to attend HSU.

I was updating my spreadsheet that has all of the West Region coaches in it. It looks like both Mary Cahill (Chapman) and Julie Jenkins (Trinity) will reach big milestones this season. Coach Cahill is three wins from 500. Coach Jenkins is 28 wins from 1000! (These win totals are from the NCAA and I know that they can differ slightly than from what the schools have.) New college head coaches at HSU (Breann Shelton) and Linfield (Haley Doerfler) are starting at 0 but have a couple of good goals to chase.

We still have an opening at JWU (Denver) but out of the other 40 schools there are 25 female coaches. Fifteen of the coaches had head coaching experience at the college level prior to taking their current position. It’s a pretty even split between having that experience and coming from high school or coming from an assistant coaching position.