Saber Families: Wow, can't believe that school is starting soon. Summer flew by, and so will the 76 days until the season starts and 91 until we tip off against Whitnall at home. When you are doing positive things time flies by. When its a struggle, it drags. SO, in this email, its all about the positive stuff! LOOKING BACK This past week we had some great things happen. The Freshman assisted in helping create film for the Jr Coaches as well as modeling skill drills a second night. We had roughly 20 coaches watching us set up our offense and run plays. They also were part of a workout that may have caused a few to need a nap, fail to cut the grass, or other stories of parents getting excuses to get out of chores and such. Last week we also had a couple open gym workouts and we ran hills, 11 of them, in the mist of the Rock jungle! After hills, and washing off the mud and blood, we opened the gym for the guys to shoot shots, including a couple Football guys showed up to shoot the rust off and eat some donuts! The concept of the hill is to build stamina, mental fortitude, and treat it as a symbol of accomplishment over our adversaries: "BeAt The Hill" (Be at the hill) There was also an open house on Thursday. I showed up to analyze the weight room with my strength trainer, Steve Becker, and we bought his program. I am so excited about this venture! Our boys that participate in the pre-season program will definitely show a marked improvement physicially and mentally. Instead of spending gas money, and gym fees, and scheduling times, we have done this for you all! I am really pumped about it. Last, a few of us met to set up the booster club. We will be establishing this club to help create resources, academic advantages, and experiences for our boys to enhance their opportunities in and out of basketball. We had a first good meeting.
Freshman Practice We will be having the LAST Freshman practice until the season starts. Tonight we won't be having a killer workout like we did before, but we will be going through all the technique items, skills, and drills for our system. Varsity and JV guys will have weight room and gym time to shoot while my assistants and I are working the freshman out. Freshman will start weights on Thursday with the kickoff. Fall League Steve Lee and Mike Mahan will be contacting parents this week to sign up for Fall League. We encourage all parents and students to participate in fall league but it is not mandatory. The Fall leagues are at New Berlin West and Brookfield Central on Sundays at 6:30/7:30pm and 1-5pm respectively. We will have two separate teams that will participate. We also will have a Tuesday league at South Division HS (TBA). Steve will be the lead on these items and a one time per week practice to prepare for it.
PODOLL'S POINTS: Off the Bench "In order to carry a positive action we must develop here a positive vision." --Dalai Lama XIV This quote really resonates with me and the future of the Sabers Basketball program. We have taken many positive actions including: Adding summer games, workouts, hill training, weight room trainer, skills trainers in the fall prior to season, junior program continuity, social media attention through twitter, and forging relationships in the community to mention many. These actions all carry the vision I mentioned to you all in my opening letter, "to create enjoyable experiences for all the student-athletes that will help them grow from boys to men, and sustain relationships even after they leave." Further, my vision was to provide plenty of opportunities for boys to participate in their desire to improve their athleticism, basketball acumen, and conditioning and if we did this and the boys grabbed it and ran with it, my vision is that we will never finish below the top 4 in conference again. The action items that I have brought to the program may have seemed overwhelming at first, but I offer that many opportunities knowing that many people have differing schedules. Please understand that we are here to provide the opportunities and it is up to you and your athlete to participate in them at the rate of comfort, not discomfort. Hit the 3 FOOTBALL, VOLLEYBALL, and X-COUNTRY athletes are welcome to join the weight room for our maintence program or open gyms to put up shots only. No contact allowed, 1 on 1, full court type stuff. Saturdays are shot days in the gym. Come on up and get yours after the other boys get hills in. Take a Charge Thanks to all of you who have stepped up in a positive way to contribute to the Boys program. We have raffle calendars from the Athletic office that Beverly Klug will be contacting you about. We would love you to buy one, and find cash coming back to you in terms of real cash or the fact it goes to the program anyway to help with costs! Thanks everyone. See people tonight. Tyler Podoll 414.690.5784 @tylerpodoll @saberhoops
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RIGHT NOW! A few good things are happening after a welcomed vacation with my family in Torch Lake (The Bahamas of the Midwest), Michigan and a couple bumps and bruises with regard to scheduling and cancellations of workouts. We are done with breaks and confusion! Tomorrow we will be having MAKE-UP HILLS DAY since SATURDAY WAS So BUSY! WE will have hills every SATURDAY! I like, if not love the ROCK! It has layers of hills, but its also symbolic---that is the highest point in the city, and we can see what it is like to be a champ and feel like we own it one hill at a time! The Good:
UP NEXT! I have included the schedule for the FALL. I am hoping it is easy to read. The easiest way for us to get gym space is for us to have a later gym time. The boys can go home, eat, do their school work, get tutoring, or have a part time job and still be a part of it and it allows my staff and I time to visit the youth programs. Here is an example from the last week in August: Explanation: The number is the Date (going from Sunday to Saturday, followed by the location, type of training, and times of the events There may be some need to edit or adjust based on events of the school but overall, I believe it is as close to accurate as can be. I will send with the weekly updates the full schedule and Edition number if it changes as well as a clip like the one above for the week. We will always have Friday off to support he Football team and we will try to find a few Soccer, X-Country, and Girls sports to go support and do it as a team! Hills: The number after the word is indicates how many weeks of hills are left followed by the amount we are doing. We will get to 22 hills. That is the total amount of Varsity games. We want to conquer the hills like the opponents so we will be having a HILLS CONTEST, November 14th Saturday Morning followed by a feast for all those that conquered the hill. We will be giving away T-shirts to those that broke down THE ROCK hill. This goes with our theme of the year: THE GAME HONORS TOUGHNESS. (YES, that is my 9 year old, ELI, working it with the big boys on the Hills.) New Coach: We have selected our new JV coach, Brian Terrell. We are very excited to have Brian who has more knee cartilage than I do and can run a bit more--I hope! He has put his time in as a volunteer coach and "team do everything guy" over the years at KING HS and I have been able to see him work with the very successful program every weekend at Bay View as we hosted the Freshman League. Hall of Fame coach, Jim Gosz recommended him highly. Brian works as a financial operation manager for MPS, has an MBA, coaches the u12 Playground Elite AAU team, played for King and 1 year in basketball for D2 Kentucky State and ran Track and Field for 4 years there as well. Welcome Coach BT! Freshman and Varsity Asst Coaches: Discussing with Sara Unertl, AD, we are not in rush to hire a Frosh Coach because we want to make sure its the right fit, the right character and motivator, and culture builder and communicator and skills guy. However, I introduced an idea and plan for the Frosh program to her lightly on Friday and we may move forward with it and it fits with everything we are trying to do in creating a positive culture and program for the players and families. Coach Marcus Reed will be connecting with Sara this week to finalize his post and Jordan Brezinski we are standing by awaiting a job opportunity to come to fruition in the Milwaukee area (still bunking in Stevens Point) unless anyone else wants to expedite the process to hire a 6'8, WBCA 1st Team All-Star, College D3 National Champion, experienced in sales industry???? How about that plug!!!! Just can't wait for it to come through as his addition will be immeasurable to the development of the kids both academically and physically. STAY TUNED... Frosh Families and 8th grade coaches: How exciting for the Freshman to be taking their first steps in the prestigious halls of FRANKLIN HS in just over a week. I need your help. I am running a Saber basketball Jr. Program coaches meeting and wanted to put our drills on tape. Per the WIAA I can work with the Frosh until the first day of school. I was hoping that I could rustle up about 8-10 guys to model drills on Monday Morning from 9-11 for video taping. Then we would like them to be a part of the live demonstrations for the coaches on Wednesday from 9-10pm? Please contact me with a confirmation with regard to being able to help. 8th grade coaches, ask your kids as well if they want to be a part of it if I am having difficulty gathering FROSH. See a separate email. Fall Leagues We have 3 fall leagues that I want to be a part of. The reason that we have three is that we had so many kids for the Wisconsin Dells trip, I want to spread it out so people don't have to sit.
If the Booster Club can form and raise money for these leagues it should help the fees. We will figure out playing spot in the next week with a form I will be distributing on Saber Update #4. Workouts and Weights I thought I could give some insight to this. I am purchasing a program specific to basketball that the 7-12 graders will be using. The trainer, Steve Becker, from Athlete Performance, is an unbelievable difference maker in athletic and mental toughness. My son, 9 years old, has been doing 2x per week workouts since March and his confidence, skill work, and social development has soared. Steve works with various HS programs around the area as groups and as well as internationally, and NBA teams and in multiple sports from Lacrosse to Football. I am so excited for us to be able to be a part of his training. He will be coming in next week and walking through with Ryan Goodno to analyze our weight room and how it can benefit our basketball guys specifically. We are purchasing bands, superbands, med balls, Pilates balls and mats and a few other items to round out our excellent resources already in house. The basketball workouts are 30-45 min in length and will increase flexibility, speed-laterally, and core strength to mention a few---all essential for the basketball athlete. The actual program for an individual at his gym is roughly $4k a year for 2-3 sessions a week. We are bringing it to Franklin in a handbook and weight cards and instant videos to share at no cost except the payment of HARD WORK! Also, every program change from preseason, to in-season, to post season and summer he will come in and measure the athletes strength and evaluate their goals. So when you see WR on the schedule, that's what we will be working on. I attached a couple videos to this email for viewing. He has a modification book for 7-8 grade vs 11-12 vs College bound LAST I always want to throw out a good read or a video. At Central Michigan, I was the Graduate Student Manager Supervisor for the Men's program while studying Sports Administration. I was given a book by a professor of an author, Jeff Jansnsen, who study's team development. It sits on my night shelf and when I need a spark or motivational tactic, I peruse it. As I analyze something from 15 years ago still to this day, he also has current literature. Here was a piece I found on twitter the other day that I found to be a good abstract read: 85% Rule –Ronnie Tollet, Jeff Jannsen Jeff Janssen is widely considered the world’s top expert on sports leadership. He helps coaches and athletes become world class leaders in athletics, academics, and life. He is the chief architect and lead instructor for cutting edge Leadership Academies at North Carolina, Stanford, Yale, and PITT. As the founder of Janssen Sports Leadership Center, Janssen associates are highly sought after speakers at many of the nation’s top athletic departments including UCLA, Michigan,Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Florida State, LSU, Arizona, and Xavier. Jeff has lots of great thoughts, ideas, and exercises on developing leadership. In his travels he gets to visit face-to-face with the winningest coaches in sports. He is afforded the opportunity to pick the brains of the coaches and the players. His research is cutting edge. His access to these programs has produced some of the most useable data in existence. His COMMITMENT CONTINUUM is the one that struck home the hardest with me because of an exercise he did with all of our programs. He asked each coach to list their team roster. Beside each player we were asked to label each player in one of the following categories: Resistant: complain about coaches, teammates, workouts, conditioning team rules, pull against the goals of team Reluctant: half effort, wait and see attitude, skeptical, hesitantly do what is asked, not bought in totally Existent: are there in body but not in mind or spirit, show up but give little, apathetic toward team, go through motions Compliant: will do what is asked by coaches and leaders, do just enough to get by, have to be pushed to start Committed: go the extra mile, self motivated, take initiative, will do right even when you aren’t watching Compelled: higher standard people, no matter the adversity they are there 100%, prepare, train and compete at highest level After we labeled each player, we were asked to determine what % of our team were on the proper side of the continuum. He then walked around the room looking at the results and correctly predicted every team’s season results. He could tell so many things from this one exercise. But the main thing that stuck with me was that in all of his research NO TEAM HAS EVER WON A CHAMPIONSHIP WITHOUT 85% of the players being Compliant, Committed or Compelled. Best Wishes Sabers,
Tyler Podoll Follow me on Twitter @tylerpodoll Follow Sabers Basketball on Twitter @saberhoops 414.690.5784 |